Myisha Richards, a Washington DC firefighter, has always considered herself one of “the good guys,” but as she continues to recover from a brutal assault, which she says occurred at the hands of a patient who called for help.
Richards and his partner were responding to a call from someone who was having trouble breathing. Minutes later, Richards was the one who needed help.
Shortly after arriving at the Southwest District apartment on the afternoon of July 31, 2020, the people inside began fighting, according to Richards. She and her partner decided to leave, but before they could reach the stairs and call for police backup, Richards was attacked, she said.
“The girl jumped over the railing, came down and started hitting me,” he explained. “Then the other girl came down, the patient (with respiratory problems) that we were there for. They literally beat me for two minutes.”
Richards said the last thing she remembers is radioing for help and seeing one of the women’s shoe kicking her in the face.
When she arrived at the hospital, she needed stitches above her eye, had bruises on her face, a concussion, and was missing hair where she says the assailants ripped handfuls from her head.
When questioned by police, one of the women told officers, “They had a fight with emergency personnel because they were not happy with their services,” according to court records obtained by the investigative team of our sister network, the News4 I-Team.
According to these documents, the two women were detained, but the charges against one of them were dropped. The other was sentenced to more than 60 hours of community service.
Richards claims that, years later, he is still suffering from the aftermath of the attack.
“We’re the good guys,” Richards said, adding, “I feel like a lot has changed.”
The I-Team’s analysis of the violence faced by firefighters and EMTs on the streets comes at a time when, according to inside sources, violent attacks are on the rise.
Just days ago, assault charges against two Washington firefighters were dismissed. Those firefighters had been seen on video beating a person while other firefighters attended to another individual nearby. The firefighters always maintained that it was a passerby who started the attack.
“I would say the situation is getting worse,” said David Hoagland, the president of the Washington firefighters union. Firefighters are hit “quite often,” according to Hoagland, but official figures are hard to find.
After being assaulted, Richards told the I-Team: “I just moved differently because I was always on high alert.” Over time, she said, the post-traumatic stress disorder that resulted from her attack continued to build up inside. She went back to work, but withdrew, stopped seeing her friends, she drank too much and one day, while she was responding to an emergency call, she couldn’t do her job anymore.
“I just froze,” Richards told the I-Team. “It couldn’t really work, all I was worried about was what everyone else was doing and how we could get out of there.”
He finished his shift and checked into a 45-day rehab center in Maryland exclusively for firefighters with addiction and post-traumatic stress problems. The Center of Excellence is funded by the International Association of Firefighters for its members.
Now that he’s back at work, Richards wanted to express himself.
“I like to talk about it because I’m not the only one,” she continued. “And I think we all find ourselves in that situation where we think we’re the only one, and sometimes talking about it helps other people.”
Most departments don’t keep logs, and Hoagland said many firefighters consider some patient assaults “part of the job.”
Drexel University’s FIRST Center tracks “media-covered” assaults on firefighters. In 2021, investigators tracked online reports of firefighters assaulted while on the job and found 350 across the United States. A year later, in 2022, the researchers found 593.
Jennifer Taylor, the center’s founding director, cautioned the I-Team that the data only reports on select assaults reported by the news media. She doesn’t deny that firefighters face harsh conditions on America’s streets.
“The first time someone assaults you, you will never forget it and you will never do the job the same,” he said.
FEMA and the International Association of Firefighters help fund the work of the FIRST Center, which is dedicated exclusively to studying firefighter safety and injuries.
Taylor cautions that EMS personnel across the country are overworked and don’t have time to recover from post-traumatic stress disorder after seeing traumatic events or violent patients.
“We put up a tile that says, if you need something, call 911, but we don’t staff it,” he said. “We don’t have enough first aid to respond to the 29 million calls we received last year, so we’re doing the job at the expense of these staff, who can’t recover from the day-to-day stress of having to do 15 or 20 jobs for who knows. that”.
Taylor and her team at the FIRST Center are developing training programs to deal with this new threat.
“There’s nothing to teach a paramedic or fire brigade first responder that work can turn violent, until now,” he says.
The center has developed a model SAVER policy for fire brigades to adopt:
- Allow on-scene personnel to decide to abandon an unsafe call with or without a patient.
- Force dispatchers to share information about previously known violent locations.
- Send police along with fire and emergency services to potentially dangerous calls.
- Increase reports of violence and share that information within departments.
THEY DETAIL THE POSSIBLE ORIGIN OF THE PROBLEM
Specialists explained to the I-Team that addiction and untreated mental illness fuel many of the attacks. They occur not only in calls for health emergencies, but sometimes even when going to a house on fire.
The union representing DC firefighters would like its members to receive training in techniques used to de-escalate conflict.
Hoagland confirmed that being punched or kicked is considered part of the job as long as it is not a serious injury.
“I think, unfortunately, it’s going in that direction, but we’re realizing that that really has to change,” he said.
The DC Fire Department continues to offer professional counselors to all of its members, but has experienced a 10-15% annual growth in the number of counselor visits.
“I think they need it now more than ever,” said Lt. Dan Brong, one of the program’s managers. “We are seeing more and more horrible calls.”
Brong explained that after a particularly traumatic or aggressive call, peer counselors contact firefighters and offer them support and resources to deal with their issues.
In Loudon County, firefighters and dispatchers have new tools to cope with the changes, in part after firefighters found themselves with a firearm after responding to a call for a possible medical emergency.
Firefighters were dispatched to suspected cardiac arrest, but were unable to enter the home when they arrived. After several minutes of calling and looking through the windows, they had to break in. When they did, the man, who had been inside sleeping (and not in cardiac arrest), had a gun in his hand. Fortunately, there were no shots.
Now, before Loudoun firefighters force their way into a home, they gather more details about who might be inside the neighborhood, the officers, or if there has been a history of violence at that address.
Loudoun now dispatches calls with important clues to responding teams, describing scenes as hot or cold. A hot scene is a code that firefighters know. It means to be cautious. In some cases, waiting for the police to join them. Everything is designed to prevent firefighters from becoming targets.
“They are very aware of the risk,” says Daniel Neal, chief of the Loudoun County Fire Battalion. “And, you know, everyone wants to go home.”
Written by Ted Oberg, produced by Rick Yarborough, shot by Steve Jones and Jeff Piper, and edited by Steve Jones.
