Pitiful … just pitiful! How in the world does policy keep police and firefighters from doing their job? Our tax dollars are being very well spent … SMH!
Fire crews and police could only watch after a man waded into San Francisco Bay, stood up to his neck and waited. They wanted to do something, but a policy tied to earlier budget cuts strictly forbade them from trying to save the 50-year-old, officials said.
A witness finally pulled the apparently suicidal man’s lifeless body from the 54-degree water.
“The incident yesterday was deeply regrettable,” he said Tuesday. “But I can also see it from our firefighters’ perspective.
They’re standing there wanting to do something, but they are handcuffed by policy at that point.”
“This just strikes me as not just a problem with funding, but a problem with the culture of what’s going on in our city, that no one would take the time and help this drowning man,” KGO quoted resident Adam Gillitt as saying.
A witness, Perry Smith, said Zack was visible from the shore of Crown Memorial State Beach and was looking at people.
“We expected to see at some point that there would be a concern for him,” another witness, Gary Barlow, told KGO.
Witness Sharon Brunetti told the Mercury News that Zack’s stepmother stopped her on the beach and asked her to call 911, saying he was threatening to take his own life.
Zack “gradually inched out farther and farther” from the shore but occasionally glanced back over his shoulder at the beach, Brunetti said.
“The next thing he was floating face down,” the Mercury News quoted her as saying.
This is absolutely unacceptable! How does not one person on the rescue squad have water training? And why did a witness eventually have to go in after him? And what ever happened to floating rafts? Sadness.
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