POLL: Was Howell cop right or wrong for delaying emergency care nearly 7 minutes to woman in labor to issue summons?

 

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67 COMMENTS

  1. Help them to the hospital and then give the summons if your thick head cannot understand there is a reason someone might speed. I generally find older police offices are more realistic about life in general, so I wonder how old this officer was. A man whose wife is in labor is not thinking clearly and as for a woman in labor well don’t even ask. Officer should have helped them to the hospital it’s what a normal person would do and not relied on the sense of 2 individuals going through a complex and fraught time. Why would the officer offer to call an ambulance when the hospital is minutes away, it would just add to the delay.

  2. this officer needs to retake his classes. This is WRONG. he must have never taken his girl friend/ wife to the hospital while in labor (if he has any kids..) Anyone who has kids and has driven someone to the hospital while in active labor knows that every minute delay can be crucial. very unimpressed with how the police in HOWELL are dealing with this. He should be suspended for a few days and put in his place.

  3. The issue here is NOT a Halachaic issue. Its a legal issue.
    The law is on the cops side.
    Even in emergency situations, not all driving rules are suspended.
    By speeding your put yourself AND others in great danger especially when a close relative is driving and he is not thinking about the road. Rather he is worried and thinking about his or her relative (which is a good).
    There have been stories where breaking the law while driving to the hospital has caused death (R”L) including at least 1 such case in our Lakewood.
    So think twice about putting others and yourself in great danger when “flying” to a doctor or hospital.
    By the way, we are very very familiar with ‘pikuach nefesh’ Halachos.

    • The question is very specific. Was the cop correct for delaying the woman in labor?
      the question is not if the guy was correct for speeding, do driving laws get suspended in emergencies, if the cop should’ve or should not have stopped them, if speeding is safe on squankum, are all cops good or bad or any of the thousand ways people are phrasing this issue.
      Plain and simple – was he right for delaying a woman in advanced labor? there is only one answer to that question. It’s not even something two people can respectfully disagree on. If you or any police officer think there is another answer then there is a serious problem.

      • i saw two weeks ago a lakewood police officer not give a woman a ticket for driving at night without headlights when she told him she is in her ninth month
        contrast that to a woman who is considered a choleh sheyesh bo sakanah

    • The issue here is NOT a ‘legal’ issue, nor was the question, “whether the law is on the cops side.
      The question was whether the officer was wrong for delaying emergency care.

  4. Think before you vote, the issue here is NOT a legal one, it’s a common sense and decency one, something you apparently lack if you think this cop was right

    • so common sense? he should have let them go and break the law and hurt someone? He is a cop, he is well equipped to deliver a baby if he has too. They should have continued on at high speed rate and potential kill themselves or others. I guess I lack it.. #bluelivesmatter

      • I am sure that the guy would have stopped speeding if the cop had just given a warning. And if he had escorted them, then for sure he would not have been able to speed! Issuing the ticket accomplished exactly nothing.

      • What a stupid comment! Cop is well equipped to deliver a baby!? I have yet to meet a cop that knows the difference between an EMT and a Paramedic. Or an urgent care clinic and a trauma center! and besides I’d to hear that line of reasoning in court. I’m sure a jury considering a large reward would fall over laughing after hearing that defense.

        And What do you think happened after they were delayed for 9 minutes??? Continue on to the hospital at 30 MPH?? (hint – the baby was born within 15 minutes of arrival)

      • yes, common sense would be to escort them to the hospital. he can then decide if he still wants to issue summons or a warning. I don’t believe the law requires the summons to be issued on the same spot of the traffic stop.

      • Beth- 1) the question here is not whether he should have, “let them go”. It is should the officer have taken 6 minutes to write the ticket & then engage in conversation for an additional 3 minutes- while the woman was in middle of advanced labor 2) giving a ticket does not prevent s/o from,”breaking the law and potentially hurting someone”. the officer would only have accomplished that by impounding the car. If the driver would get ‘shaken up” & slow down bec of a ticket, he would do the same after being pulled over and issued a warning. Since this driver felt he was in a true emergency situation, he likely drove just as fast once he left the officer’s line of sight (or faster bec now he was delayed by 9 minutes).
        c) Officers are not EMT, not doctors. They are not, “he is well equipped to deliver a baby”. Especially not- on the side of a dark road, without proper equipment

  5. Which genius established the Howell police departmental policy to prohibit an officer from providing an escort to the hospital? OPRA that record.

    There are hundreds if not thousands of police departments across this great nation that have no such policy and nor would they ever make a ridiculous policy like this.

    The suggestion to call an ambulance and sit around somewhere along a long stretch of road for the potentially several minutes it’ll take the personnel to get there was also nonsensical. The statistics have proven how many folks have died due to the pathetically slow response time of the ambulance companies.

    If g-d forbid an officer suffers a medical trauma and needs to be in the hospital icu asap – does the Howell PD policy also forbid placing the injured officer in a cop car and speeding to the hospital? Does it require that injured officer to “sit tight” and wait around for the ambulance to get there?? Methinks, no, Meknows, they ain’t sitting around and waiting for some smbulance to get there..

    For goodness sake, where is the humanity!??

  6. Which genius established the Howell police departmental policy to prohibit an officer from providing an escort to the hospital? OPRA that record.

    There are hundreds if not thousands of police departments across this great nation that have no such policy and nor would they ever make a ridiculous policy like this.

    The suggestion to call an ambulance and sit around somewhere along a long stretch of road for the potentially several minutes it’ll take the personnel to get there was also nonsensical. The statistics have proven how many folks have died due to the pathetically slow response time of the ambulance companies.

    If g-d forbid an officer suffers a medical trauma and needs to be in the hospital icu asap – does the Howell PD policy also forbid placing the injured officer in a cop car and speeding to the hospital? Does it require that injured officer to “sit tight” and wait around for the ambulance to get there?? Methinks, no, Meknows, they ain’t sitting around and waiting for some smbulance to get there..

    For goodness sake, where is the humanity!?? #alllivesmatter

  7. Would be nice to know what the judge will decide & what is acceptable in this situation. Should she have called an ambulance? Should he have escorted her to the hospital?

  8. For those saying “endangering others” he wasn’t doing 110 mph he was at around 80 mph.
    What’s his other option at that point when it was a sudden advance labor? As he had been to the dr first!

    He had a REAL EMERGENCY!!! The mother and kid could easily have not made it a few extra minutes.

    As regards to the Officer there’s right and there’s wrong and there’s curtesy

    As curtesy he should have let them go and helped them
    As right and wrong he should have done WHATEVER HE CAN to help this couple get to a Hospital at that advance stage.

    And for those saying that ppl just try to get out of tickets- we’ll help this I’m this life and death situation then follow up
    And if they were lying ticket, sue whatever but 1st assist them

  9. Many of you are missing the point. This issue is not whether the driver deserved a ticket or not. The issue is whether the cop should have handled it differently without causing ANY delay. Many suggestions were put forth: he could have mailed the ticket; he could have escorted them to the hospital and give them the ticket once the situation was stabilized; he could have asked them if they would like an ambulance IMMEDIATELY after stopping them and realizing the situation.
    The question at stake is the police officer’s humanity. This definitely could have been handled differently. That is why public officials have sensitivity training.

  10. Why is TLS even considering that there was a possibility that the cop wasn’t wrong or was right for delaying them. The poll should be about the ticket not the delay.

  11. Try this, “Was the Howell Police Officer right for issuing a summons to a driver pulled over for speeding his wife in advanced labor to the hospital”?

  12. For all you out there who have been on this story ever since and condemning this driver for speeding in a situation where no-one denies could have been a life and death c”v situation but yet never seem to have a problem when police officers speed sometimes at dangerously high speeds and many times the emergencies are not exactly a life or death situation – and noone seems to have a problem with that. Hope no-one misunderstands me, I am a huge police fan but there just seems to be hypocrisy at work. If we can can understand why a police would have to speed to let’s say back up his partner who pulled over a yeshiva bocher on Seventh Street because his partner feels his life is in jeopardy yet we can’t seem to understand that someone would speed in a situation that this person found himself in, to me speaks to sheer hypocrisy..

  13. It’s not THAT dangerous to go 78 m/h at 11.30 at night!!
    Might be against the law but don’t make it sound like the driver did something very dangerous!!!
    Total lack of courtesy on the cops part! Legally he deserved that ticket but it wasn’t the righttime e to give it as he had a very legitimate reason to speed!
    (I could bet this police man doesn’t have any children of his own!!)

  14. Beth obviously never went through labor. I never said he should let them break the law. We can even debate giving him thw ticket at the hospital. The lack of decency and common sense is making her wait for 7! mins. I guess you do lack. (Btw, cops are completely NOT well equipped to deliver a baby they recieve the most basic training-no more than you can read in any book.) #bluelivesDOmatter (but that doesn’t disqaulify this one from being a jerk).

  15. 2 out of 3 of my kids swallowed fluid during delivery and needed to be auctioned in order to breathe. Having a baby in a car would mean mine wouldnt have survived. Imagine!! For a speeding ticket!! And once that happens, u cant take it back- a life lost, its too late.

  16. My doctor was stopped for speeding to get to the hospital in time for my advanced labor and delivery. He was let go IMMEDIATELY. THIS COP IS SERIOUSLY LACKING COMMON SENSE.

  17. I clearly see people ,do not understand , how laws actually work ,They are not suggestions or optional.i wish this much effort went into learning about fraud

  18. Just have to say i was on my way to the hospital this morning and we were going 62 on squankum. We got pulled over, and as soon as the cop realized we were going to the hospital he quickly gave back my husband’s license, told us to drive safe and wished us luck. Thank you!!

  19. The officer could not have escorted the couple to the hospital due to the fact that the hospital, which is in Long Branch, is located outside of his jurisdiction.
    The baby was born an hour after the traffic stop.(35 to 40 minutes to the hospital plus 20 minutes until birth.) They would have arrived at the hospital seven minutes sooner had they not been stopped. And if the husband continued going 78 mph he could have been stopped by other officers anywhere along the way.
    Bottom line: They should have called Hatzolah as soon as the wife felt delivery was imminent.

  20. In 2012, Dana Reiner was in labor and her husband, James Reiner, was doing his best to get her to the hospital as quickly as possible. Along the way they passed two police officers who pulled them over, although James Reiner insists they were not speeding. Dana was in late labor and the video shows they drove 1.1 miles before finally pulling over. James’ window was broken on his older car and he opened the door to tell the officer his wife was in labor. He was promptly forced to the ground at gunpoint, handcuffed faced down on the ground and left there for seven minutes while he and his wife pleaded with the officers, who eventually called for an ambulance which arrived at the hospital 3 minutes before the baby was born:
    A U.S. District magistrate judge ruled in July 2014 that while there is no clearly established legal right to be present at the birth of one’s child, Dandurand and Thomas violated the Reiners’ constitutional rights when they continued to detain the couple after learning Dana was in labor.
    Magistrate Judge Paul Cherry wrote…
    “The court does not think a reasonable officer, after realizing (as Officers Dandurand and Thomas did soon after handcuffing James) that plaintiffs were en route to the hospital to have their baby, would have continued to detain them, much less have kept James under arrest and taken him to jail for the night. To the contrary: such conduct, at that point, violates the clearly established guarantees of the Fourth Amendment,”
    What is important here is that in court the delay was recognized as a mistake on the part of those officers.
    Nevertheless, even in that( much worse) case (which anyone can easily research) the cops involved were not dismissed and are still on active duty. So unless the department’s are willing to take an honest look at themselves, which doesn’t seem the case here either, don’t expect any repercussions.

  21. Certainly the officer was correct. From reading all of the coverage on this story it’s clear that the 9 minute delay didn’t impact the delivery. The child was born 20 minutes AFTER the couple arrived at the hospital. Nothing in any of the coverage indicates that the woman and fetus were at risk.

  22. Interesting…. I notice that as of 3:30 PM 152 people say he was right.
    This means the cop still has no clue and the other 151 obviously don’t understand the question.

  23. He should’ve been stopped because he was driving 80 mph on a 50 mph speed zone, but he could’ve give him a warning, and even if he feels he deserves a ticket, he could’ve taken down his license plate and send him a summons in the mail.but to hold him up and process the ticket right then and there is unacceptable!

  24. To Beth, Anil Zola and anyone else with their wise suggestions, yes, you are totally lacking it!!
    Having been in labor 7 times I can say that it’s cruel and unlawful to to detain a woman in advanced labor. Yes, it’s extremely dangerous keeping a woman about to give birth on the side of a dark road on a winter night. Things can change from one minute to the next and he potentially endangered both mother and child. What exactly can be right about that?
    Going 78 on pretty empty roads is NOT life-threatening,yet what this officer did definitely was! Blue lives matter, but there was no threat to blue lives. Civilian lives matter too and there was great threat there!!!

  25. To all the idiot commenting that emergency vehicles speed during emergency and same should be for all of us; did you notice that they have flashing lights all over and it makes other drivers aware of them? They don’t just speed with a regular car without emergency lights. Get it?

  26. I’m surprised no one has pointed out that if you do the math, 11:55pm on ticket, 12:35am delivery, stopped for 10 min., approx. 18 miles to the hospital from the stop and baby born 20 min. after arrival. This means that the driver got to the hospital and drove 18 miles in 10 min. after the stop, 12:05 – 12:15am. That’s averaging over 100 mph. WOW!

  27. why are people judging the man driving the van? the fact that there’s a law that sets the speed limit doesn’t make going over it necessarily unsafe. ambulances regularly travel faster than the posted limit and they arguably should be the ones going slow.there are plenty of other examples. as long as you’re not inebriated, have an emergency and it’s safe to do so you should be able to speed. if stopped you should explain and for good cause showing be waived right on.

  28. I think cops have a very tough job and thank you lpd for keeping Lakewood safe and understanding our culture but for a cop to just ignore an emergency situation is grounds for dismissal bec if thats what a cops attitude is what will happen g-d forbid he gets stuck in a gun situation and doesnt have the proper thinking process oh its ok bec my bosses will back my stupidity this is just my thoughts

  29. I am glad that we can now debate this matter somewhat hypothetically. I wonder what the result of the investigation would have been had the lack of courtesy by the cop caused a tragic outcome.

  30. Here is the Federal Court opinion in Reiner v Dandurand mentioned above. Interesting legal precedent in a matter with some similarities. The Howell PD officer had many options for holding the speeding driver accountable without forcing delayed medical care in an obviously emergent situation. He may have violated the couples Constitutional rights. I hope the officer and the Howell PD are held accountable. The Howell PD’s motto is “Virtue in Difficulty”; in this instance they failed miserably to adhere to that standard.

    https://www.leagle.com/decision/infdco20140717a02

  31. Can all you idiots read the question again. The question was, was he right or wrong for delaying emergency care nearly 7 minutes to woman in labor to issue summons?
    Not if he was right or wrong in issuing the ticket, or if the driver was right or wrong in speeding.

  32. @Joe, i clearly see you dont know how common sense works. Noone blames the cop for pulling over (even ticketing) a speeding driver, holding them up was the problem.

    @amilzola, i burst out laughing at your comment, maybe heart attack victims shouldnt rush to the hospital because if they survive then obviously nothing was wrong (just to make sure amilzola understands-that was sarcastic).

    @U Achshell, so deer (the concern according to the cop) understand lights and sirens

  33. @justicebrandais
    From reading the case of the couple detained on Indiana, it seems that Indiana would consider speeding while in advance labor a justifiable violation of the law. Thus making the continued detaining of the couple unconstitutional.
    1) am I interpreting the decision correctly?
    2) would anyone know if New Jersey has a similar standard?

  34. Still trying to decide if the cop is heartless, rude etc. or just totally insane (same to all the pro cop posters) I’ve actually had quiet a few positive experiences with cops god bless them all, but cops like this guy shouldn’t be “keeping us safe”
    btw someone commented about app.com i just checked and they actually have pretty decent coverage of the story in my opinion, even most of the comments are good.

  35. To all you commen sense people:

    Believe me, if was a nice young American couple from Howell (i.e. not from the Jewish community) he would of not acted that way and/or expedited his ticket of not waive it altogether.

    Call it what it is.

  36. @ u achshell. First responder vehicles with lights on them don’t make it much safer. If anything its more dangerous. People panic don’t know where to move over or sudden short stops etc. Many times they violate traffic laws which can catch people off guard.
    I have an interesting point I haven’t seen spoken abt.

  37. I find it interesting, as an Italian American from Salerno where there’s a very picturesque place called Marotta that over there the officer’s last name, Ma Rotta, means “But this is the way”. Which is a firm implication that we do it my way, period. Living in Lakewood for the last 50 years I’ve heard from my numerous Jewish friends that you can a lot from a person’s name. Ciao and Felice Ringraziamento. (Happy Thanksgiving). God watched over the bambino. Mazal Tov!

  38. this story can have an effect in the future too. Anyone including hatzolah would be afraid to speed in an emergency situation being afraid to get stopped and held up by Howell Police department! The need to fix this immediately. This can turn into a life and death situation.

  39. Thanks to the scoop for confirming that there are still stupid people out there!!!!
    Who do not know the difference between emergency and non emergency

    Who think cops are” well equipped to deliver a baby” in a car on a dark road.

    Who think spreading is the same dangerous as jumping off a cliff (especially on the road he got a ticket is a straight road)

    For those who think the cop was “nice” because he spoke with normal words. (Hint, the Nazis, also spoke nice… look at the deeds not the words)

    We can go on and on

    There are just many stupid people out there!!!

  40. When we were being trained in pursuit driving our instructor pointed out that at 60 mph you are going 88 feet per second. By using extreme caution with lights and sirens by slowing down at intersections even when the lights are green the end result is worst case you’ll get there 30 seconds to a minute late. Those Crown Victoria P71s were scary. Over 70 and it would pitch a foot left or right on the slightest bump. We had the siren on a left foot switch so we could keep both hands on the wheel. Always pull over off the road because the gas tank was in the back before they replaced the steel with polymer. If you got rear ended the whole car would explode. I guess the vehicles are much safer now but its pretty easy to flip an Explorer. Main point, pushing it just gets you a few seconds which 99% of the time won’t matter. They sent us to Daytona in California and taught us some crazy moves like 180’s and other stunts which we never got to do in real life. It was in that instructor’s class that we learned the stats and math. Better to lose a minute than a life. But that cop was way off base… adding a ten minute delay to a woman in labor. I never heard of it except from videos of moron cops on you tube. If you want to puke, check some them out. Making a woman in labor lay on her belly at gunpoint while screaming at her and her husband to put their (moderated) hands behind their back. Too many steroids that day?

  41. Very nice for the Howell cops Offer to call an Ambulance after keeping them waiting 7 Minutes than handing the driver a Ticket. What’s she supposed to do now wait on the side of the road 15 Minutes until a Howell Township Ambulance shows up so that she should have more time to put her life and her unborn babies life at risk

  42. Very nice for the Howell cops Offer to call an Ambulance after keeping them waiting 7 Minutes than handing the driver a Ticket. What’s she supposed to do now wait on the side of the road another 15 Minutes until a Howell Township Ambulance shows up so that she should have more time to put her life and her unborn babies life at risk

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