I agree 100%, about hospital security being lax. Of the 20 plus hospitals here in the Denver Metro area, I only know of
1 that has a full time
armed LEO presence. All the others have that wonderful
HSS security, and only a few of those "officers" carry Tasers.
Guns v. Blades
Here's something that happened to me not too long ago. Got called to a Mental Health Facility downtown, for a kid off his meds, hearing voices and "seeing" things, on a M-1 hold needing to go to Denver General, to be medically cleared for placement.
We roll up and find the Pt. with the staff member already waiting for us outside. There is no PD on scene. My medic and I walk up and start to get the report. 18 y/o kid, homeless, Hx of Psych behavior and off his Meds for the past 3 weeks. Stated he's been hearing voices, telling him to hurt himself. The Pt. was cooperative and willing to go into DG.
So we walk over to the ambulance and before we get in, I ask if the Pt. if he has anything on him I need to know about, and if he could empty his pockets for me. The "staff" member comes up and says, he's already been searched. I look at her and tell her, "That I'd like to to it for myself.....I'm funny that way." I get a "Humph" from the staff member and ask the kid to pull his shirt out of his waist band, and to just turn around for me. Seeing nothing, I ask him to empty his pockets on the step into the rig.
He pulls out a wallet, some papers, a few other nick nack stuff, a cigarette lighter and 2 boxes of cigarettes. I pick one box up, shake it and hear a couple of cigarettes inside. Open it and confirm, that there are indeed 2 cigarettes in there. I pick up the 2nd box and shake it, feeling it somewhat full. I open it, and see that it's about 3/4 of the way full. But something inside caught my eye. There was a partially smoked cigarette in there, (you could tell by the yellow on the filter). Call it, my spidy senses started tingling, or I felt a disturbance in the force, but I pulled out that partially smoked cigarette and found, that this kid emptied the tobacco out of the cigarette, then had taken a wooden dowel rod, (the thickness of a cigarette) about 2 inches long, and had taken a razor blade off of, what looked like a disposable razor, and stuck one end of the razor, into one end of the dowel, and then placed it back into the emptied cigarette. He made himself a nice "slashing" weapon.
I looked over at the staff member, the one that told me he was searched, and just gave her a look of, "Riiiiiiight", while showing her this kids "weapon". I ask the Pt. if he has anything more on him I need to know about, and he tells me he doesn't.
We put his stuff in a plastic bag and get him loaded up and buckled in on our cot, and instead of sitting next to him on our "work bench", I take up a position directly behind him in our "Captain's chair", keeping an eye on him the whole way to the HSP.
We get to DG and walk into the ED, and are met by the HSS security people who announce either Medical or Psych, alerting either the charge nurse or the psych nurse. The HSS guy comes over and asks the Pt. if he has anything on him, keys, lighter, knives, ect., to which I hold up the plastic bag and show him what I found, but he my want to call up one of the S.O.'s from downstairs, or if there's a DPD officer available to come up and search this guy further. The HSS guy asks "Why?", and I tell him because I found a cleverly disguised blade on him, and I show him the "cigarette blade" I found. HSS guys eyes got as big as saucers, and he walks over to a phone and makes a call.
The Psych nurse arrives and I give her my hand off report and tell her about the blade I found, and that I already told the HSS guy to place a call, for one of the S.O.'s to come up. So we take the Pt. down to the Psych ED and put him in a room just as the S.O. gets there, and I show him the "Cigarette blade", and he concurs that a more detailed search is needed.
I walk out, and up to the front desk, to finish my report. I'm there for awhile and the S.O. that did the search, comes walking up to me and tells me, that he found another razor, an older style single blade razor, in it's protective cardboard, taped to the bottom of his foot. Not his shoe, but the sole of his foot.
Needless to say, I don't care if a staff member, family member, RN, Doc, or even PD says a Pt. I'm about to transport has been searched, I'm going to preform my own search. Like Reagan told Gorbachev........."Trust, But Verify."