Mother claims paramedics racist
A woman in Carpentersville, Illinois, claims that when her babysitter called 911 when her child was in distress, the paramedics refused to take the baby to the hospital simply because he was Hispanic:
The federal lawsuit said the village “had a practice and/or policy to limit emergency medical services to persons of Hispanic ancestry.”
Gloria Lopez, 28, who now lives in Elgin, alleges paramedics Diane Graham and Martin Gruber acted with gross negligence and violated 4-month-old Osbiel Lopez’s civil rights in failing to take him to a hospital after a 911 call in September 2006.
The lawsuit filed in U.S. District Court in Chicago claims the event was part of a villagewide effort to reduce services to Hispanics.
Come on, really? Paramedics just thought they would let a baby die because he had brown skin? Paramedics who work in a Chicago suburb of 30,000 people, 40% of whom identify themselves as Hispanic? Maybe that’s why they took jobs in that town, so they could get their jollies treating Mexicans like shit. Please.
While the door is open for certainly some sort of negligence that may have gone on here, this seems like a spurious use of the race card that hurts folks that have legitimate reasons for playing that hand.
Information from: http://www.dailyherald.com/story/?id=425...
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1. Chrysippus
September 21, 2007 @ 10:35 am
I agree that there is no way paramedics would leave a child to die. However, I think the paramedics thought the child would be fine because reports are that he did not appear to be in significant danger at the time the first crew arrived. But, it appears that there was a mis-diagnosis which allowed the condition to worsen 3 hours later.
2. minortopics
September 21, 2007 @ 11:43 am
Certainly, Chrysippus, on the surface it does appear if perhaps the paramedics made *some* sort of error in judgment (which unfortunately can happen from time to time, especially if there’s a language barrier), and I’m not ruling anything like that out. But that it was just due to BOTH of them being racists, especially with a 4 month old baby involved? That, given the fact that they make calls to Hispanic homes probably on a daily basis, they would choose this instance to say “Ah, f*ck it?” I ain’t buying it.
3. socialresponsibility
March 27, 2009 @ 12:23 pm
Thank God for Paramedics, Firefighters and police. They do their job day in and day out, saving lives, protecting property, enforcing the law, and every day they do all these things without much fanfare or appreciation. We tend to take them for granted, don’t we? Especially when all is good and everything works out, we tend to overlook all the good they do. Shame on us! It’s so easy as a society to blame others for our own lack of responsibility, for mistakes, accidents, etc…get a lawyer and sue if things don’t turn out like we planned. Perhaps we should thank those who serve us day in and day out for all the good things they do, instead of making a media topic ut of unfortunate circumstances such as these. By the way, if these things happened all the time and people could just sue everyone if things don’t go their way, there would BE NO paramedics, firefighters and police. How would we be in our society without them?