LAPD Said There Was "No Ambulance to Be Had." But Did They Ask?

Amid the ongoing ICE protests rocking Los Angeles, a disturbing trend has emerged: the seemingly intentional targeting of protesters and journalists with riot control weapons. Specifically, multiple videos appear to show police deliberately targeting people present at protests, and not engaged in violence, with so-called “kinetic impact projectiles“ or, more commonly, “rubber bullets.“

While all of these incidents are extremely concerning, one in particular caught my attention: a protester in front of Los Angeles City Hall sits on the ground, bleeding from an obvious head wound, while LAPD officers attempt to provide care. In response to the cameraman asking why he hasn’t called her an ambulance, one officer responds that “there’s no ambulance to be had,“ attributing the lack of resources to the “chaos“ sown by the protests.

To be clear, the video doesn’t show the whole interaction; it’s entirely possible the officer neglected to inform the cameraman that he had attempted to call for an ambulance. Taken at face value, however, the incident runs through several layers of “not how any of this works.“

“No Rescues Available“ Doesn’t Mean “Don’t Ask,“ in LA or Elsewhere

It wouldn’t be surprising at all to find out the officer was correct about the status of the city’s EMS system. Anyone who’s worked on a 911 ambulance has occasionally gone through periods of what one old employer called “NRA,“ short for “no rescues available.“ It’s a status that every EMS system hit once in a while even before COVID; as Florida got its teeth kicked in by the Delta variant, it was not unheard of to get dispatched from one county line to the other. This is true even for places without LAFD’s notorious staffing crisis; though LAFD has workarounds like backup apparatus and private contracts to beef up response, a paramedic with experience in LA County’s EMS scene told me “it would not be uncommon to wait 45+ mins for [an] ambulance.”

A rescue not being available, however, doesn’t mean a request for one doesn’t get made. If a person makes a 911 call, or another first responder radios that EMS assistance is necessary, the call is logged within a computerized dispatch system and held until the next unit is available. Meanwhile, admin can shore up ambulance supply through a variety of tactics, including shutting down non-critical interfacility transfers, upgrading all patient transports to use lights and sirens, and pressing neighboring units into service through pre-existing mutual aid agreements. Even if the officer’s seeming assumption that no ambulances were available were correct, it wouldn’t warrant not requesting one.

The LAPD Operations Manual appears to agree:

EMS is More than Ambulances

Ambulances also aren’t the only method of delivering EMS care. “That system is fire based,” according to the former LA-area medic, “so there should at least be an engine to respond.” Every Los Angeles firefighter is at minimum an EMT, meaning every fire truck in the city has four or five guys who can perform Basic Life Support functions—controlling bleeding, assessing a patient’s level of consciousness, and performing limited lifesaving interventions. (As of 2019, the city also operated almost 80 “assessment engines,“ which staff a paramedic and stock all the on-scene capabilities of an Advanced Life Support ambulance, but trauma is not where paramedics earn their keep.)

And while transport time is the determining factor in trauma cases, that’s not to say getting a more qualified EMS crew than a pair of cops (whose training is typically limited to “tactical emergencies“ and basic first aid). Not only does even a BLS truck have more and better options for bleeding control and basic interventions than cops can be expected to carry, but performing a trauma assessment—including an assessment of the patient’s Glasgow Coma Scale score, a vital metric to be recorded early and often in head injuries—could shift the patient’s priority for transport significantly, lessening the time she’d have to wait for an ambulance to become available.

It’s Hard to Find a Good Answer for the LAPD

These are not idle questions: despite their reputation as “less-lethal“ options, the dangers of rubber bullets are by now well-known. A 2017 review found that more than 350 people were killed or permanently disfigured by kinetic impact projectiles, with head and neck injuries accounting for nearly half of all deaths and more than 80% of all permanent disabilities.

I’ll reiterate that there’s a lot of this interaction we don’t see, but even in the best-case scenario the officer makes some pretty strange decisions here. If he did call for an ambulance and get word that none were available, it’s a strangely escalatory choice to berate protesters for causing an ambulance shortage instead of just…telling them he’d called for one. It’s also see this incident outside the context of the LAPD’s other riot-control actions, including Australian reporter Lauren Tomasi appearing to be deliberately aimed at and fired upon with the same weapon.

It’s at best some pretty terrible customer service, and it gets a lot worse from there.

Neither the LAPD nor LAFD responded to requests for comment.