SEATTLE — Seattle police officers attempting to complete a routine first-aid course last week finished their training session by kneeling on the necks of bullet-ridden dummies, horrified medical trainees confirmed.
“The course started off normal enough,” said Amy Moran, one of several getting her first-aid certificate at the King County night school. “We went over bandages and the recovery position, but as soon as the CPR dummies were laid out on the floor, some officers started trying to flip them over and rough them up a little bit. Others screamed at their dummy to show them their hands, and threatened them with pepper spray when they wouldn’t tell them where they’d been that evening.”
Instructor Kathy Spriggs noted things took a turn for the worse when she brought out replacement dummies that happened to be Black.
“Well, they’d damaged the first lot of CPR dummies, so I got the rest of the class to bring out the spares, which were made from a darker shade of rubber. Within minutes it was like an explosion went off,” said Spriggs while sweeping up the mess. “Armed squads showed up out of nowhere, officers cuffed dummies so hard they were ripping arms off, multiple shots were fired, and I saw two cops execute a move on a dummy I can only describe as a tag-team Batista bomb.”
For his part, Capt. Chuck Stonely said he “didn’t really know what the fuss was about.”
“Frankly, I sent the boys out to get some good press — ya know, save lives, yada yada. But from what they tell me, some of the CPR dummies were acting suspiciously, and were uncooperative when questioned,” said Stonely. “I tell my squad, ‘Better to be judged by 12 than carried by six,’ and if that means to feel safe they need to kneel on the neck of a CPR dummy until the gentle wheeze from its rubber lips is snuffed out, so be it.”
SPD later expressed concern that, if forced to pay for the damage, they might not be able to afford new state-of-the-art tanks for local precincts.