My Statement on False/Malicious Reporting

As both a rape and cold-case survivor, the Carlee Russell situation -- and especially the discussions surrounding it -- have been really triggering for me. 

There are several large problems in play.  Below are my thoughts on changes I would like to see.  I know they won't happen.  But I pay for this blog so that I can have some voice in this world, even if nobody ever reads it.  Maybe some day someone will, after my death.

1. Racialization of crime has gone full circle in my lifetime.  When I was a child, the races of the people involved were often reported.  Not always.  You wouldn't be told if the criminal was white, unless he was an immigrant.  But you would always be told if any criminal was black, and especially if the victims were white.  That changed over time as African-Americans gained more voice.  We became "politically correct," more aware of appropriate verbal boundaries.  That has come full-circle now.  The race of a perpetrator is always mentioned if they are white, even if it wasn't an actual crime but only rudeness.  Victimization is important if the victims are black.  I'm hoping we will eventually come to a point of actual decency, where we treat people equally.  I'm not counting on it though.  Everything doesn't boil down to race every time.  I must agree to disagree with Ibram Kendi on that point. 
2. Nobody in America actually understands how the 911 system works.  I ran 911 calls for a number of years, both as a firefighter and paramedic.  In my personal experience, Americans of all demographics severely abuse the emergency response system and think nothing of it.  Mitt Romney, in his presidential campaign, advised people to do more of the same -- use ambulances as taxis to the emergency room for primary care.  This is why we can't have nice things, and why firefighters and paramedics have greatly decreased life expectancy.
3. While it's popular to demonize Karen at every turn, every demographic in America does all of the behaviors attributed to white women.  As a homeless person, the first time anyone lied about me to the police it was an African-American woman in Henrico, Virginia.  I saw her stiffen up and zoom past me when she came around the corner walking her dogs.  The police showed up a few minutes later.  They had no lawful reason to ask me to leave.  I left just to humor that bitch, so she wouldn't worsen my situation.  I had an African-American apartment manager once decline to rent to me.  He suggested that next time I park around the corner and walk up so they couldn't see I was homeless.  In Fort Bragg, California, the white librarians, and on another occasion two white guys in a City truck, both called the police and lied about me.  In both of those instances the police were annoyed about it.  That was two incidents of city employees, while on the payroll, filing false, malicious reports with the police.  My point is, not only does the same malicious reporting happen to people who aren't black, African-Americans also do it to people who are below them socially.  White men especially love talking about Karen while doing Karen behaviors.  They talk about male Karen and black Karen, how does that work?  White women make everybody act stupid?  Every obnoxious person gets relabeled a white woman?  That's healthy.
4. There are other horrible ways that people abuse the 911 system that also need to be criminally charged IMHO.  Back when I used to waste my time trying to have reasonable conversations on Reddit, I saw a post about BLM in Rochester.  Someone had set fire to a car in the street -- an incredibly dangerous act.  When the tires explode, they go projectile.  They endangered all kinds of life and property. Worse yet, when the fire crew arrived, someone jumped onto the bumper and wouldn't allow them to put out the fire.  The BLM people of Reddit would not allow themselves to be educated on the many ways in which they endangered lives with that stunt.  I explained that other people were waiting to have their 911 calls answered, waiting for help that would not come while this arsonist was stalling the fire crew.   They could not be convinced that they had ground the paramedics to a halt, because they didn't see paramedics in the video and don't understand how shit works in real life.  The BLM people were as reasonable and rational about it as MAGA people.  They couldn't be convinced that they didn't know what the dispatchers had pending. I'm white and telling them something they didn't want to hear, so I'm fake news.  Many people flatly announced to me that nobody else needed help in that moment.  Like small children who think anything they can't see doesn't exist, as if all of Rochester could be seen in that video.  JFC.   Just like MAGA people, they didn't blink before telling me -- someone with credentials -- how things work.  No matter how patiently I attempted to explain, I got called a racist and my input dismissed.  There was no talking sense to any of them.  I regret that the fire crew didn't floor it and send that idiot flying through the sky.  The arson was bad enough.  Deliberately bringing the emergency response system to a standstill to make your point is domestic terrorism, punishing the most vulnerable and the hardest working simultaneously.  Fuck everything about that guy and everybody who thinks that was fine.  If that's an official BLM thing, that's an OK strategy to employ, I withdraw my support from BLM.  N-O.

SHAMELESS LIARS

I worked as a paramedic in a high-volume, high-acuity urban system.  That means that we ran a lot of bad calls every day, often 14 or more in a 12-hour shift.  We often didn't get a potty break for eight hours or more.  I was frequently much sicker than the people I was transporting,

I was once called to a woman with chest pains.  Because of the seriousness of the call, a fire truck was dispatched because the medics (a) often can't get there fast enough, and (b) may need extra help when someone is dying.

Because of the way we haul ass when we're led to believe someone is dying, the ambulance I was in almost collided with the responding fire truck as they came around a corner.  We almost got killed racing to help this woman.

We arrived to find an elderly woman sitting with her neighbor in no distress at all.  She had a large, necrotic wound on her leg, a dead patch of flesh.  She has needed ongoing care at a wound clinic for months or years.  Her neighbor, seeing her condition, had convinced her to finally seek help.  And that's great.  She definitely needed some intervention.  She may end up losing that leg, which is unfortunate when she could have been helped all along.  This is absolutely not an emergency and does not warrant a 911 call.  The neighbor should have called her primary care physician and made an appointment.  At her age she gets Medicare.  Her Medicare Advantage plan will send free transportation to carry  her to her medical appointments.  These were African-Americans, very unlikely to be Romney voters.

We asked her why she said she was having chest pain.  She flatly explained that she knew from experience if she told the truth, it would take too long to get an ambulance.  She has called for gout before, another thing that constitutes system abuse when you call 911 about it.  Nobody ever dies from gout.

We explained to her that we had almost been killed attempting to respond to her false report.  She shrugged.  It's very special to tell someone you almost died just now because of their lies and have them show you how much they truly don't care.  We explained to her that when it takes so long, that's because we have other people that are much sicker than her, who may die because they're not getting helped while we deal with her.  She just DGAF.  She was fine cutting the line in front of whoever.  She only wants what she wants.  This is America, where everybody uses the wheelchair toilet every time they're going to stink it up, and doesn't think of that as a privilege flex.

So while she's an elderly woman with a serious medical problem, I want her to be criminally charged for what she did there.  And there's no way it will ever happen, because America is a big, fat, selifish idiot that likes to stay broken and blame Karen for everything.

Men and African-Americans are just as likely to make frivolous or retaliatory 911 calls, or be wild and abusive in public, as "Karen." Watch Parking Wars sometime and see.  Watch every demographic of Americans try to call the police on the parking enforcement people, as if they're not on the same payroll. Again, I personally had malicious, untrue 911 calls made against myself by people of all demographics as a homeless person, and I am white and female.  You don't have to be African-American to have your civil rights violated by the police, or be hassled by other citizens.  I could give many examples.

MALICIOUS LIARS

When I lived in Chicago I was once a witness on a malicious, racist 911 call.  Some teenagers were hanging out with a radio near my house.  The police arrived.  Someone had called in a "fight," probably because most of the kids were African-American.  If I had to use one word to describe their behavior I would go with "flirting" or "dancing."  And that's what I told the police.  There was no fight.  So the cops left.  I would like to see the person who called in that report charged for lying to the police.

FREQUENT FLYERS

It was common discussion among firefighters and paramedics, that we had no power to do anything about our "frequent flyers," or chronic system abusers.  There were many people we recognized either by the complaint or the address.  But we had people who called us all the time over absolute nonsense.  And they were just as likely to be male or African-American as white and female.  This isn't a Karen problem.

Unfortunately the police are the only ones who can criminally charge people.  And they don't know or care what havoc people are wreaking on the fire crews.  You have to antagonize the police before they do anything. 

The other issue is that they don't want to discourage people from crying wolf, because then they might have a real emergency, not call and then die, and the county will get sued.  So we have to kiss their butts every time.

NOTE:  If you call an ambulance, and the paramedic asks you, "Have you tried any over-the-counter medications?" that's probably their way of saying you're abusing the system.  You should get in a car and go to urgent care.  They're not allowed to refuse to treat you or tell you how they really feel. 

MY POSITION ON FALSE AND MALICIOUS REPORTING

It's very simple.  As a rape survivor, people have reflexively called me a liar all my life -- even when, especially when, they know for sure I'm telling the truth.  So false reporters really piss me off.

Making a false police report is a crime.  When that guy in Boston murdered his wife, he blamed some non-existent black men.  Guess what?  The police rounded up however many people who had nothing to do with it and hassled them about it.  Did they get beaten up?  Miss time from work?  Who knows how inconvenient it was for how many people.  That guy needed to be charged separately for that.  And because he racialized it, I would be good with adding hate crime charges.

So for another example, say someone calls 911 and says, "There's a black man walking around my apartment and he doesn't live here."  If the police arrive and the person is another tenant, two things should happen.  1. they should be charged with a false report.  and 2. you can add hate crimes, because they mentioned the race of the person as the reason they were calling.  They didn't talk to him, or the building manager.  He wasn't doing anything.  They were just harassing somebody and misusing the 911 system.  Charge them.  Teach them not to do it.

If you drank a box of wine and went to CVS to scream about Sharia law, you can be arrested for drunk and disorderly.

Many people are suggesting that Carlee Russell should just be forgiven, no harm, no foul.  Some people have argued that Carlee shouldn't be charged because the "Karens" don't get charged. 

That person has it exactly backwards.  First of all, it's someone who would rather scapegoat one demographic than actually solve problems, evidenced by their use of the word "Karen" as a euphemism for "problematic person."  But if "Karen" has committed a crime, this white lady would like to see her charged rather than just have people talk shit without learning or solving anything.  And false, malicious reporting is a crime.  Lying to the police is a crime.

The old woman who lied about having chest pains shouldn't go to jail.  She's too old and frail.  But she should be called up in front of a judge and made to explain why she lied to the ambulance crew.  Somebody needs to impress upon her the seriousness of her problem behavior.  She absolutely didn't get it.  I advised the nurse, when I dropped her off, to treat everyone in the hospital, and possibly some people walking past, before seeing that woman.  It was all I could do.

Carlee Russell needs to go to jail for what she did.  It was not okay.  The many people who are fine with turning a blind eye to it are absolutely part of the problem.