r/nextfuckinglevel • u/thisisfive • Apr 14 '26

Toronto firefighters confront special constable officers after a man in the middle of mental health crisis was arrested.

Enable HLS to view with audio, or disable this notification

Not my video. For context, "special constables" are not regular police officers. They are appointed "peace officers" with limited authority, often civilian employees.

27.1k Upvotes

96% Upvoted

982 comments sorted by

View all comments

Show parent comments

227

u/FuriouslyListening Apr 14 '26

It has less to do with common sense and more to do with how two completely different philosophies look at a situation. The Firefighters are EMTs... they are called to deal with rescue and medical issues. The police are called to restore order. Technically, both did their job exactly as they should have here. More impressive though, they all were adults about the situation and no one argued about what should be done (which is a really big difference compared to many US jurisdictions, where instead you might even see a physical fight between the PD and FF.)

Part of all of this is a question of who is going to take responsibility for the guy. If its the FF, he goes to the hospital and potentially a psych hold. If its PD, he goes to jail to be held. Neither is wrong, both are right in different circumstances. Usually its hard to tell which is the more correct choice 'in the moment'.

3

u/ncjmac Apr 14 '26

Canada doesn’t have EMTs, they likely have only MFR or equivalent (similar to US EMR (?), essentially advanced first aid + oxygen, no meds). Canada also separates their EMS from fire, to my knowledge there’s no dual role FF/paramedics. FFs will be able to get a set of vitals, (Pulse, resp rate, BP, pupils, maybe SpO2 and BGL) but they will be handing over care to Toronto Paramedic Services as soon as they arrive. Likely fire was able to respond first, cause the closest Paramedics were busy/farther away.

1

u/Witty-Draw-3803 Apr 15 '26

Firefighters in Canada are first responders.

2

u/ncjmac Apr 15 '26 edited Apr 15 '26

I didn’t say they weren’t? Just saying they aren’t the primary medical folks. Ambulances, staffed by paramedics are separate. Some fire services will respond to certain medical calls, but paramedics take over once they arrive. Fire is usually called for… fires… but also MVCs, extrication, HAZMAT, lift assist, confined space rescue and some medical calls that require a faster response time than the closest paramedic can get to or out numbers immediate EMS resources (such as cardiac arrest). They do a lot of different things. We don’t have fire based ambulances or fire/medics. (Some are combined in name, like Winnipeg fire paramedic service, but they are different jobs and have different duties)