By David Stout
The New York Times
WASHINGTON — Firefighters, ambulance technicians, police officers and the nurses and doctors at a Washington hospital committed “multiple individual failures” in responding to the ultimately fatal beating of a journalist near his home last January, an official inquiry concluded today.
In a report that raised serious questions about emergency medical treatment in the nation’s capital, the District of Columbia’s inspector general said the initial response to the attack upon David E. Rosenbaum, a retired New York Times reporter, suggested “alarming levels of complacency and indifference.”
A string of mistakes led to a collective and erroneous conclusion that Mr. Rosenbaum, who was found lying semi-conscious on a sidewalk the night of Jan. 6, was drunk when in fact he had been beaten and robbed, the inquiry found.