By Missy Wilkinson
The Times-Picayune | The New Orleans Advocate
NEW ORLEANS — When New Orleans medics treat a gunshot wound, they follow a protocol: Make sure the patient has an open airway, control bleeding via a tourniquet or pressure dressing, give blood in some cases, and hustle to the trauma center.
When that patient is carrying a firearm — legally or illegally — the plan for the weapon until lately has been less clear-cut.
“We’ve had folks who deteriorated and become more agitated, more combative in the back of the truck, and I certainly don’t want a weapon anywhere in reach,” said New Orleans EMS Chief Bill Salmeron. “If they were legally carrying, we would ask them not to. But by law, I couldn’t force you to do anything.”
This has changed, Salmeron said. New Orleans EMS is now rolling out stickers on the sides of all 53 of its ambulances, declaring them weapons-free zones.
The change comes under a law that some French Quarter businesses invoked over the summer to bar firearms inside their stores, Salmeron said.
The spread of those signs through the Vieux Carre came after local officials failed to convince state lawmakers to exclude downtown New Orleans from a new law that allows anyone 18 or older to carry concealed weapons without a permit.
The concept of firearms-free ambulances isn’t new to Louisiana. Since at least 2016, Acadian Ambulance has banned weapons on its fleet of 620 ambulances, spread across four states, said spokesperson Randall Mann.
“We are a weapons and firearms-free workplace — that includes buildings and property, including ambulances,” Mann said. “If a patient has a weapon, we secure it with law enforcement or a family member before transport.”
When New Orleans EMS medics encounter a patient with a weapon, they’ll either hand it off to a friend or family member or call police.
An NOPD spokesperson said that those firearms are “handled according to NOPD protocol regarding whether the weapon is considered evidence in an investigation and collected as such, or if it is considered personal property not involved in an investigation to be returned to the rightful owner.”
Salmeron cited the new concealed carry law as the impetus for the new stickers. The agency explored other options that included installing gun safes on the exterior of its ambulances. But some modified firearms are so sensitive, he said, that the jostle from a pothole could set them off.
“We have trucks with bullet holes outside. They’re not bullet proof at all,” Salmeron said. “By posting the stickers on the side of the truck, we wanted to make it known we don’t allow weapons. And hopefully, they will not put it in the back of the truck.”
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