Another look at police and fire jobs

In Ray Bradbury’s science fiction novel, “Fahrenheit 451,” firemen don’t put out fires. In a society that has banned books, firemen set fires. They burn stashes of books reported by citizens who have been conditioned to watch TV, not read.

It is an extreme example of how job descriptions can change.

But today, jobs are changing, so why wouldn’t the jobs of firefighters and police officers change — not to burn books or encourage TV watching — but to provide the service a community needs at the cost taxpayers can afford.

Other trades and professions have changed, some radically.

I can remember sitting in the backseat of the car at a railroad crossing waiting for the train to pass, knowing that when it did the brakemen and conductor in caboose would be at the windows, ready to return a wave.

The railroad industry gave the language the word featherbedding, yet that industry has changed. Over a period of about 20 years, the caboose was replaced by an End of Train Device. The EDT electronically monitors the things that brakemen and conductors used to watch for from the caboose.

Dentists used to clean their patients’ teeth, until the economics of their business dictated that they hire hygienists to do work that didn’t require a doctorate.

My own business has gone through enormous changes as newspapers struggle to fit into what’s becoming close to a “Fahrenheit 451” world, dominated by TV and computer screens. We’re not just The Vindicator any more, we’re also Vindy.com. Note the camera icons that increasingly appear with stories signally the reader that there is video to be seen on Vindy.com. Last week Bertram de Souza filmed one of his commentaries for Vindy.com, and video editorials aren’t far in the future.

I received a flier last week from a New York university offering a course in videography for print journalists. I don’t think I’ll sign up, but if one of my sons were in the business I’d pay his way.

Inevitable change

Things change, and we have to change with them. Which brings us back to police offers and firefighters.

There’s no enthusiasm in the Valley for consolidating services between or among communities. The area can’t even agree on unified 911 services; various subdivisions feel they must maintain their own call centers. There are a few unified fire districts, but that’s about it.

So if a community won’t combine its police or fire department with a neighboring police or fire department, maybe it should consider combining its own police and fire departments.

This is not a new concept, and sometimes it has failed. Probably the largest city in the country where it has been working for decades is Kalamazoo, Mich., a city of 80,000, which doesn’t hire a police officer or a firefighter, it hires a public safety officer who is trained and equipped to do both jobs.

Woodbury, Minn., has trained 10 of its 22 police officers to be first responders to fire calls. They carry firefighter turnout gear in the back of their cruisers. Their ability to respond quickly allows the community to maintain a largely volunteer and part-time fire department.

I grew up amid a lot of firemen and cops in Pittsburgh. And as I think about them, their abilities and skill sets were not that different. They had to be in shape, they had to have a healthy degree of fearlessness, and most of them were smart — maybe not always book smart, but smart.

This is not a proposal to be taken lightly. It’s a complex issue and there is a lot of information out there about varying degrees of police, fire and EMT integration. It takes rethinking the way the jobs are done from the top down and the bottom up.

So there it is. Boardman, Austintown, Campbell, Girard — just to name a few — if you’re facing financial challenges and you can’t bring yourself to talk merger with the guy next door, maybe you should begin looking at consolidating your own assets.

Oh, and if you feel a rumbling, it’s not another Midwest earthquake. It’s Dad spinning in his grave. Those police and firemen I hung around with were at our house in the late ’50s and through the ’60s, when he was recording secretary of International Association of Fire Fighters, Local 1, in Pittsburgh.

Sorry, Dad, but it’s a different world.

X Mangan is editorial page editor of the Vindicator. Bertram de Souza’s column this week appears on Page 1.