Is Plymouth Township Board of Trustees Exploring Public Safety Officers?

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Question: What is a PSO?

Answer: A PSO is a Public Safety Officer

A Public Safety Officer sounds like another name for a Police Officer. This is partly true; Part of the job of a Public Safety Officer is law enforcement. There are other parts, though. A Public Safety Officer also is a trained and certified Firefighter, and a trained and certified Emergency Medical Technician.

One person, three different responsibilities. One person, three different qualifications. Four if you count driving the Firetruck.

The PSO is a model some communities use as their first response model. Basically, this model takes a person and creates a sort of hybrid first responder, cross trained in three different jobs.

Police Officer, Firefighter, & Paramedic responsibilities are now combined. Everyone is trained and certified in all three disciplines. I won't lie, I had never heard about this safety model used by some communities until very recently. I have heard of the volunteer firefighters in smaller towns, but never police doing the firefighting as well as law enforcement.

As near as I can figure, with the information I was able to get, there will be a huge amount of training involved, and it will take a lot of time to get this model for first response off the ground, and working.

Every community that does this has a slightly different approach, but it basically goes like this:

With the Public Safety Officer (PSO) model, the fire stations would remain empty, and when the call comes in for a fire, PSO's respond to the scene in police cars. The closest car to the firehouse, goes there, and that PSO is responsible for getting the fire truck to the scene of the fire.

The Public Safety Officers responding directly to the fire, have their firefighting gear in the trunk of their squad car, as well as some sort of fire extinguisher. They also have their basic EMT medical gear in the trunk of their car as well. They will obviously be at the scene first, and will be waiting for the fire truck to arrive to get water to the scene.

When the PSO gets to the scene, the first thing is to shed the law enforcement gear, (gun belt, bullet proof vest, etc.) and get into firefighting gear. At that point, they assess the situation, and respond accordingly, while waiting for the fire truck. If there are injuries, an ambulance would be called. It would not be a township EMT vehicle coming from the fire station, but rather a contracted ambulance service, like Huron Valley Ambulance.

This is the basic outline of how the PSO model works in a fire situation. As I stated, though, there are many different tweaks that communities make to suit their particular needs.

It appears that there is a very real possibility that this first responder safety model could be coming to Plymouth Township very soon. The Plymouth Township Board of Trustees recently downsized the Plymouth Township Fire Department, and now is discussing doing away with full-time firefighters altogether.

If you have not heard about this, you should start paying attention and begin asking questions. This is not something that is in the beginning conceptual phase. The Plymouth Township Board of Trustees are currently negotiating a contract with the police union, and I believe that this would need to be negotiated into that contract.

I also know that members of the Plymouth Township Board of Trustees have been in contact, and asking questions of the City of Farmington Public Safety leadership. Farmington has a PSO first responder model, and our township officials have been in contact with them. This leads me to believe that Plymouth Township would be looking to tailor its model to one that is somewhat like Farmington's.

More importantly, it leads me to believe that this is going to happen sooner rather than later. This makes me wonder why Plymouth Township's elected officials have been so quiet about this? This is a huge change in the public safety model, and it would seem that Plymouth Township would seek input from its citizens as to how they feel.

There is a lot to discuss here. There is the question of safety. There is the question of cost. There is the question of feasibility. There is the question of the remaining firefighters, and their future employment. There is the question of whether the majority of police officers are on board with this model.

My biggest question is are we asking too much of one person?

I do not for one second question the courage of our firefighters or our police officers in Plymouth Township. My question is are we asking too much?

I am no expert, not by a long shot, but it just seems to me that the training and mindset of a firefighter and a police officer are different in many ways.

I would guess that firefighters are trained and quite knowledgeable in building structure, mechanical aptitude, and combustibles, among a whole host of other things.

Police officers are trained and knowledgeable in things like ballistics, psychology, good communication skills, and a whole host of other things.

Emergency Medical Technicians are trained and knowledgeable in assessing traumatic injuries, and diagnosing injuries even when the patient may not be conscious, among many other things.

Taking this into consideration, I think many questions remain.

Is it fair to put the responsibility of all three of these different jobs on one person?

In order to keep proficient in all disciplines, will we be training our first responders to the point of burn out?

Will we be compromising the safety of our citizens with this model? Will we be compromising the safety of our first responders with all of these responsibilities?

There are many questions to be considered and answered.

I have but one question for the Plymouth Township Board of Trustees. If you are seriously considering having a PSO model for first response, when does the public discussion begin?

It is important to note that I am not as knowledgeable about this as I would like to be, and based on that, I would encourage anyone with more expertise in these areas to give opinions, and correct my assumptions where necessary.

A healthy discussion about the PSO model for first response can only help to facilitate more knowledge for the citizens of Plymouth Township, and maybe, just maybe, it will spur our elected officials to open up a dialogue with the citizens they elected to serve...