Saturday, November 15, 2008

C.P., Code 1

Keep burnin’ till it sets on the Westside.

In the event you didn’t know, Los Angeles is on fire. We’ve had a lot of fires lately, which has kept the firefighters all over Southern California busy. Whenever there is widespread chaos, people tend to get a little bit crazy. They drive crazy, they act crazy, and a lot of them don’t want to leave their houses. The firefighters are busy putting out fires, and they rely on us (deputy sheriff’s and police officers) to go inside and drag them out. A few of our stations have already sent half of their patrol units to the fire-stricken areas.

Of course, being the stable-minded deputy sheriff I am, I’m the first to volunteer to go into the danger zone and save some lives. It might not be as fun as chasing gangsters in Compton, but it still involves saving lives. Six of one, half dozen of another.

But bureaucracy constantly plagues me whenever I want to volunteer for something like this. Actually, bureaucracy plagues law enforcement as a whole. This is how my conversation went today:

Helo: Hey Sergeant, it’s Deputy Helo. I’m here at home watching all of these crazy fires on TV, and they mentioned that a few of our stations are sending deputies. Can I come pick up a car and roll-out?

Sergeant: No.

Helo: I already talked to the watch commander at one of the stations. He said they need deputies.

Sergeant: That’s nice. If they need them, they can ask.

Helo: I think they’re a little too busy to ask.

Sergeant: And I’m too busy to keep telling you “no.” Do you have an outside overtime approval from that station? What if you get carried-over and we need you here? Do you realize the liability in going to a wildfire?

Helo: I think the captain will approve the outside overtime on the spot. And I’m volunteering for this. I don’t want to get paid. Oh yeah, I’m off tonight, so no need to worry about me getting carried over. What liability? Didn’t we all sign up to save lives? And I’m command post trained. I’m willing to bet they need someone to run the C.P.

Sergeant: Shut up. If they need you, they’ll call you. But they don’t, and I’ve got shit to do.

It makes no sense to me why our department, the largest Sheriff’s department in the world, makes it so hard to do anything from checking out a radio to going to help during a wildfire. It takes an operations plan to wipe our asses.

Ahh, bureaucracy. And to think that people actually want this when it comes to medicine.

UPDATE from Drumwaster: Welcome to all of the visitors from the esteemed Doctor Pournelle’s site!