ERBLM

                                          

In the nineties it wasn’t easy to be a black cop with the Los Angeles Police Department. It wasn’t easy being a female cop either. I’m sure being a lesbian didn’t help her out any either with those guys. That intersectionality stuff doesn’t matter to us of course.

She came to the ER by ambulance after being highly intoxicated subsequent to a breakup with her live in partner. She had made suicidal statements so when she got to the ER she had an automatic referral to the social worker.  That would be the really busy social worker who put her close to the end of the intervention line being watched closely by her nurse. She was still too intoxicated to make a good assessment.

Finally, about the time I was scheduled to leave I went into her room to start the evaluation. She had woken up a little and had been talking to her nurse. When I introduced myself she turned her attention to me.  After twenty minutes of conversation I still couldn’t get a real commitment from her on the issue of self harm and liking to be on the cautious side I suggested she stay in the psychiatric part of the hospital for a couple of days to sort things out. After all, she did have guns at home.

I couldn’t get any traction with that idea either.  We were in sort of stand off mode. She had made statements and she did have a recent breakup and she had those guns at home and wouldn’t commit to not being suicidal.  That put me in a difficult spot and it didn’t get any less difficult when the ER doc said,

“It’s your call, Bob. Tell me what you want to do.”

Well what I wanted to do was go home at the time I was supposed to but that was already off the list.

I called up to the psychiatric part of the hospital to have their nurse come down and evaluate the patient for an admission.  She has less training than I do but more power on situations like this. I can’t admit patients for her psychiatric wing but she can.  It looked like I could turf this to her but when she heard the patient was a Los Angeles cop she told me that LAPD didn’t have a contract to admit at our facility. We should contact the free standing psychiatric facility across town that did have such a contract.

That was pretty simple except for the fact that they couldn’t come to our facility to arrange an admittance and if we wanted to send her over to their facility in an ambulance they would be glad to admit her when she arrived.  A plan in which we let the patient who seemed to remain suicidal leave in an ambulance was not a good plan. Without a psychiatric hold she could ask the ambulance to let her out and legally they would have to because she wasn’t on a hold. She could then go home and hurt herself and if she did, everyone would be pointing at me. Not the ER doc. Not our psych nurse. Not the admitting staff at the other facility and not the poor guys driving the ambulance. Just me.

Jezz Bob what were you thinking?

It was now close to three in the morning and my back ached and my head ached and the nurse sort of gave me that ”what happening here?” look and the doc pretended like he wasn’t getting anxious but I knew he was.

I thought about calling one of our local cops to come down and put someone else’s cop in a cop car for the ride to the other facility but then realized how lame that would sound and even though our cops would do it if I asked, it would be an imposition. Besides that, I finally realized that if I had the patient put on a hold she wouldn’t be able to have a gun for a year and she would lose her job.

I had to get her out of our hospital into someone else’s hospital, a gay black female cop, and if something went wrong that whole intersectionality thing would land squarely on me.  The sun would be up in a couple of hours and this was all still totally on me.

I knew a lot about the LAPD. The chief of police lived nearby when I was a kid.  I’d had my share of run ins with them as a student in the sixties and for sure, no one would accuse them of being user friendly. They were in and out of the ER frequently and our relations were OK  but not like our own  police department,  besides the patient wasn’t part of the  division that used our hospital. She was from way across town and I didn’t know anyone from that division so I couldn’t get help form an LAPD cop who I actually knew by name.

When I called the watch commander in that division way across town I knew what would happen. They would expect me to spend another couple of hours doing what didn’t work in the first place. He hemmed and hawed and started to find a reason not to take care of one of his officers. The only way I could keep the patient safe and stay legal was to have a police officer take her by force to the other hospital across town.  He suggested that I ask our local cops to do that. “After all” I think he said “She is in your city.”

That was it for me. Even steady on social workers have their limits.

“After all she is one of your cops. After all, you guys have enough bad press all the time and I’d hate to add to it.  After all, one of my neighbors is a columnist for the LA Times and he is always asking if I have any good stories and he’s not a fan of the cops.  Am I making my point here?”

He rolled over with that onslaught.

“You are. It will take half an hour to get there. I’ll do it myself.”

Of course I was tempted to stick around but it was now just an hour before sunrise and my head and back still ached.

“Good move Bob” the doc said.

Yeah it was but other than the doc and nurse, no one had a clue about the battle we fought for our patient no matter how many intersections she crossed…..