Police Emergency Incompetence - John Dunn, Ambertec, P.E., P.C.

We took a walk on the Jones Beach boardwalk this afternoon and then got back in the car to drive back home.

At 5:10 PM today, October 9, 2010, the drawbridge serving the southern extreme of the Meadowbrook Parway both to and from Jones Beach here in Nassau County, was opened and raised to allow passage of a boat underneath that bridge. Following that boat's passage however, the bridge failed to close.

On the parkway approaching the northbound side of the bridge where I and other drivers had come to a stop, three overhead traffic lights turned to and then remained red, the safety crossing gate descended and then remained down with its red lights flashing and an extremely loud siren began to sound.

Using my cell phone, I called 911 for assistance, but the response to my call was quite unsatisfactory.

At first, I couldn't get the 911 officer to comprehend my reason for calling. "Is there a drawbridge on the Meadowbrook?" he asked. I was dumbfounded at this question. Finally however, he took my message.

Fifteen minutes after my call, no officers had yet arrived and to my astonishment, people had begun to physically force the downed safety gate upwards, even with the gate lights still flashing, to allow cars to drive under that gate, Many cars did so and drove on with no regard to whether the movable roadbed ahead would actually support their vehicles.  

I called 911 again to report that this was happening and was assured that a "trooper" would arrive momentarily. I told the officer that there had better be more than one trooper because I could now see people forcing the southbound lanes' gate upward as well.

After a while, a woman who acted as if she were a plainclothes officer came walking along amidst the stopped cars, yelling at this driver and then that one, including myself, threatening to issue tickets for this and that, while exuding an arrogance-of-authority that was quite inappropriate to the circumstances.

Finally this woman said to one driver nearby so I could hear her, that there were "pins missing" from the bridge's structure.

Suddenly the siren turned off, the northbound safety gate rose up and the overhead traffic signals turned from red to green whereupon this woman screamed "No!!!" and went running at full tilt back towards the gate, right in the middle of a whole bunch of now moving cars, as if to bring to a stop everything that had just happened. She did not succeed.

Don't the police personnel carry radios or use them? For safety's sake, shouldn't the re-opening of the bridge to traffic have required obtaining agreement and consent from every officer on the scene?

Is the drawbridge structurally secure? What about those "missing pins"?

Some of the answers are self evident, but in my view, incompetence appears to have trumped proper procedures.

The total elapsed time for this unfortunate debacle was approximately forty-five minutes.

Comments

[John D.]

I received a phone call today from the police sergeant who was among the responders to the drawbridge emergency. It turns out that the woman who seemd to be posing as a police officer was doing just that; she was NOT an officer after all, but a bridge inspector who should have been busying herself with the bridge itself and not giving her inappropriate attention to stranded drivers.

According to the sergeant, my second 911 call occured exactly eleven seconds after a patrol car had arrived at the other side, the southbound side, of the bridge, out of sight from my vantage point, where they began trying to stop people from forcing up that southbound gate.

Eventually, a decision was made to open the bridge, but that decision was not properly communicated to police and bridge staff although it should have been.

I guess this will just have to be one for the memoirs.