Sometimes. Paramedics deal with a lot of people who react to life saving stuff with violence. Sometimes this is because the person is afraid and in fight mode, sometimes it’s drugs sometimes it’s because they face consequences after they get better. Anytime you mix violence with other stressors, low pay, overtime, threats of legal or financial censure for not dealing being proactive with violence when you have to prioritize something else more than running away, PTSD from bad experiences… Even good people get hard hearted.
The same pressures that turn cops into monsters are present in paramedic work, it’s just there’s different priorities. The same initiatives that change laws to be more health focused and the movement to defund and demilliterize cops in favour of using those resources to provide communities with additional compassionate supports and services for wider multitude of different responses also benefit paramedics. The problem with cops isn’t always that they exist. If someone is trying to murder someone then it is kind of nice to have someone you can call - it’s what the design of the system turns people into and how they become tools of oppression and an escalating force of violence. To not become a jaded paramedic willing to solve problems “the easy way” takes sustained willpower that some systems make into a superhuman feat.
If you want to oversimplify it into a slogan sure.
“The systems of law and systemic oppression currently in place mean that it is virtually impossible to be a net good to society while trying to serve it in the capacity of cop even if you are well intentioned and want to stop violence.” doesn’t fit nicely on a shirt.
Problem being is when you take the slogan as nothing but axiomatic truth you kind of miss the point the slogan was made for. The cops whether some or all were never the point. It’s the overlaping systems we have to dismantle.
Sometimes. Paramedics deal with a lot of people who react to life saving stuff with violence. Sometimes this is because the person is afraid and in fight mode, sometimes it’s drugs sometimes it’s because they face consequences after they get better. Anytime you mix violence with other stressors, low pay, overtime, threats of legal or financial censure for not dealing being proactive with violence when you have to prioritize something else more than running away, PTSD from bad experiences… Even good people get hard hearted.
The same pressures that turn cops into monsters are present in paramedic work, it’s just there’s different priorities. The same initiatives that change laws to be more health focused and the movement to defund and demilliterize cops in favour of using those resources to provide communities with additional compassionate supports and services for wider multitude of different responses also benefit paramedics. The problem with cops isn’t always that they exist. If someone is trying to murder someone then it is kind of nice to have someone you can call - it’s what the design of the system turns people into and how they become tools of oppression and an escalating force of violence. To not become a jaded paramedic willing to solve problems “the easy way” takes sustained willpower that some systems make into a superhuman feat.
it’s always been ACAB not some cops are bastards. exemplified by the paramedics being gleeful at getting to do a lynching
If you want to oversimplify it into a slogan sure.
“The systems of law and systemic oppression currently in place mean that it is virtually impossible to be a net good to society while trying to serve it in the capacity of cop even if you are well intentioned and want to stop violence.” doesn’t fit nicely on a shirt.
Problem being is when you take the slogan as nothing but axiomatic truth you kind of miss the point the slogan was made for. The cops whether some or all were never the point. It’s the overlaping systems we have to dismantle.