Protesters Go to Jail in Ambulance

I was one of 19 ADAPT protesters arrested Saturday, July 28, 2001, at the Colorado Parade of Homes. To my great astonishment, we were taken to jail in an ambulance!

We were taken to a staging area a few yards away from the actual protest site, where we waited to be transported to jail. After a while, paramedics came and started taking our blood pressures. They said that they were concerned for us because of the heat. When they came to me, I refused to allow them to take my blood pressure.

After this, I noticed that they seemed to be going through some kind of selection process with some of us, as there were several folks who were pushed right next to the ambulance. One of my colleagues told me that one of the paramedics said that they were taking the most "medically challenged" of us in the ambulance.

As I was pondering on how they would determine who was "medically challenged", I saw several Douglas County sheriff's deputies lift Tom R. in his power chair into the ambulance. Then, they lifted Joe E. in his manual wheelchair into the ambulance. Next, was Frank M., who immediately began to panic. He began yelling, and flailing his arms and legs. I went over to Frank and began to explain to him what was going on, and to reassure him that he would be okay.

As I was backing away to rejoin the others, one of the deputies asked, "Hey, can you do us a favor?" "Will you come with us in here?" "You seem to be the only one who can keep Frank calm." "No," I replied, backing away. "I don't want to go in there." Despite my protests, they lifted me into the ambulance. An officer went along with us.

While on the way to jail, I struck up a conversation with the paramedic who was with us. "Can you guys afford to have one of your ambulances out of commission?" I asked. "Well", said the paramedic, "We only have two ambulances for the whole county, and the cops wanted them both." "We told them no, they could only have one." "As it is, Dispatch is freaking; they don't understand why they're using the ambulance to transport you guys." "Neither do I", I muttered, and settled back for the long ride, praying that our ambulance would not be needed while this fiasco was in progress.

As far as I was able to tell, no one but I was given even a semblance of a choice as to whether or not I wanted to be transported in the ambulance. It was not only dangerous, but humiliating as well, to be picked up like that. I had to tell the officers and paramedics how to lift my chair properly because they almost tipped me over at first.

I feel that the police should have handled the transport issue differently. It would have been better to have used the accessible school bus that was available, rather than transport us in an ambulance. Further, to knowingly put the people of Douglas County at risk by the ineffective use of their meager resources was appalling. What if that ambulance had been needed?

To my knowledge, this has not happened again, most likely because there has not been a large-scale protest by people with disabilities in Douglas County. I hope that in the event of another ADAPT protest, a valuable lesson was learned about transporting people with disabilities to jail.