WOODRIDGE, N.Y. — Tickets that cited two Hatzolah EMTs for “unlawfully” responding to an emergency call with flashing red lights were dropped Tuesday after an attorney wrote to the CEO of the EMS company.
Members of the group were responding to the scene of a diabetic who had passed out in front of a municipal building when they were ticketed.
“On behalf of the Mayor, the Village of Woodridge both recognizes and acknowledges the rights of the properly licensed Hatzolah emergency vehicles to be treated as any other emergency vehicles including police, fire and other emergency vehicles,” attorney Jeffrey Kaplan wrote to Rabbi David Cohen, the CEO of Caskill Hatzolah, according to the MidHudson News.
“In the future, the Village of Woodridge will continue to insure that the Hatzolah ambulances are treated in the same fashion as other emergency vehicles and trust that the operators of emergency vehicles will operate their vehicles in a safe and prudent manner,” he wrote.
The officer who claimed that he had been forced to write the tickets, Police Chief John Calvello, wrote in another letter that he believed the tickets should “be immediately withdrawn.”
“We were pleased to receive a letter withdrawing the tickets from our members,” Cohen told the MidHudson News. “And also a letter which set forth the village policy that Hatzolah will be recognized as every other official emergency organization... we won’t have this issue come up again.”