As reported by NYpost.com
Assaults by emotionally disturbed persons on city first responders are soaring — yet the main change City Hall’s imposing is to end use of the term “EDP.”
This year has seen 146 EMTs, paramedics and firefighters assaulted at work through October, vs. 129 for all of 2018, the NY Post reported Saturday. This follows a doubling over the last decade of EDP calls to 911.
It can mean mayhem. On Oct. 25, for instance, EMT Daniel Manning suffered a nose fracture from a man he’d revived in a Bronx park. EMT Darlene-Marie Miller, nine months pregnant, got shoved into a hospital desk by another “client” on Nov. 1. (Her baby was unscathed; she suffered a torn labrum.)
Yet Mayor Bill de Blasio’s big response to the mental-health crisis was a two-page press release last month ordering an end to the use of “EDP” and handing ThriveNYC $37 million to start training social workers to take the lead on mental-health emergencies.
Get real, says Vincent Variale, the head of the EMTs’ union: “When you have an EDP situation, EMS and police are going to respond. They have to.”
Of course, the mayor ignored his own panel of experts in setting his new policies. Why would he listen to the city workers who actually deal with the problem?
