Get my drift? EMS car and ambulance crew caught on video playing in the snow. Lakewood, New Jersey officials are investigating.
Is this some non-standard driver’s training, good old fashioned fun, or just wrong? Is this an important news story for a community to read about and see, or is it just what happens on the graveyard shift and should have stayed there?
Whatever your opinion, it is probably another item to put on that growing list of things not do while on the job or in uniform in the age of YouTube.
The Lakewood, NJ story and video comes from reporter Matt Pais out of our sister publication APP.com (Asbury Park Press)(There are also a lot of reader comments with the story at APP.com):
Township officials are reviewing a video clip posted on the Internet that apparently shows an ambulance and another emergency medical service vehicle being used for joyrides through a snow-covered parking lot.
The clip, posted on the car-enthusiast Web site streetfire.net and later taken down, is a little more than three minutes long and appears to depict the two vehicles purposely being driven erratically in the parking lot of the BlueClaws stadium at Cedar Bridge and New Hampshire avenues during a heavy snowstorm.
The video, according to the Web site, was posted by a user named “sickashelltom” on March 3, a day after up to a foot of snow fell in the area. The video carries the title “Cops Drifting in Snow!!!” but it shows an EMS squad car equipped with overhead lights, not a police car.
Township Manager Frank Edwards said he was made aware of the video by EMS supervisor Scott Carter and has asked for a written report of the known facts of the video. After receiving the report, Edwards said, he and a labor lawyer will review the video and determine whether any action will be taken against squad members.
“Beyond that, it’s a personnel matter, and I’m not going to comment,” Edwards said.
Carter, who is in charge of the paid department, could not be reached for comment.
The video was filmed at night and appears to have been recorded from inside another car parked in the snow-covered lot. Set to the soundtrack of Kid Rock’s “Devil Without a Cause,” much of the filmed action focuses on the sedan sharply turning and spinning out across the snow.
At one point, a passenger from the front seat of the ambulance trades places with the driver of the sedan and begins another series of spins and slides. The video closes with a shot of the ambulance spinning in a tight circle before drifting out of view.
