GRAND RAPIDS, Mich. — About half of the LIFE Ambulance medics decided to wear bulletproof vests, even if their agency doesn’t mandate nor purchase them.
“It’s kind of a little security blanket for me,” said field supervisor Van Solkema, who started wearing a bulletproof vest two years ago.
Solkema told MLive about 40 percent of his co-workers added vests to their uniform. They either buy them on their own or repurpose old police vests.
LIFE medics are also equipped with a panic button on their radios to alert dispatchers if a scene becomes unsafe.
While medics are already trained to assess the safety of a scene before they enter it, sometimes a situation that initially seems safe can escalate quickly, like the incident that happened in Detroit where two medics responding to a call for a woman with an ankle injury, were stabbed by the woman’s boyfriend who suddenly became violent.