Bad knickers
Can’t anybody get it right? Not even firefighters? The people who rescue us from burning buildings and smashed cars?
A fire chief has promised a full independent inquiry into claims firefighters took photos of car crash victims and shared them on WhatsApp.
Male firefighters at Dorset and Wiltshire Fire Service (DWFS) are alleged to have made degrading comments about the women in a group chat.
A female firefighter told ITV news she had heard comments about the type of underwear women had been wearing.
Had been wearing before they were killed in a crash.
Why would anyone do that? Whence comes the impulse to mock dead women for their underwear? There’s no tangible payoff the way there is with rape or robbery, there’s just random sneering at freshly dead women. I can’t see the fun in it.
Dorset Police said it would lead inquiries into the allegations, after consulting Wiltshire Police.
A spokesperson added the details in the ITV report were of a “very concerning nature” which “understandably caused concern amongst the public and especially families of victims”.
Yes you don’t really want to hear about firefighters taking postmortem photos of your daughters’ or sisters’ underwear.
Come on, how many times did our mothers tell us “put on clean under where, you don’t want to be seen dead in those”. Apparently they knew what was going on…
My experience with emergency responders–admittedly just mine, and hence anecdotal–is that they are often extremely conservative men, often possessing distaste for their patients. I’ve seen this over and over, from paramedics, to firefighters, to Mountain Rescue volunteers, and now even in my municipal and county emergency radio response work. There are plenty of good, caring professionals in those groups, but more often than not, if you pull a person out of there at random, he will fit my description. It’s one of the main reasons why I’m just going to crawl up into the dark forest and die of hypothermia if I ever develop any serious health condition, rather than subject myself again to the indignity of emergency response and the organized medical system.
Damn, that’s depressing.
Bring on the asteroid…
James, I used to work for Social Security Disability, and read medical records and talked to doctors every day. It’s horrifying what some of them will say about their clients. At least, what they would say about them in the 80s; maybe it’s changed now with the new rules on privacy and so forth, but I imagine they still say/think those things, they just are careful not to write them down.