The Seattle City Council in May voted to make it illegal to get in the way of a firefighter responding to an emergency.
Vietnam veteran, longtime Toledo Police Department reserve officer, former 911 dispatch director and current Winlock-area Lewis County Fire District 15 commissioner Randy Pennington saw that on the news. He thought the council was going crazy — wasn’t it already illegal, under state law, to interfere with a firefighter’s response?
Not anymore, he discovered.
“It was repealed. The language was removed from that statute,” Pennington told the Lewis County Fire Commissioners Association in a quarterly meeting on Monday. “That’s what’s prompted Seattle to do this.”
He reached out to the Lewis County Prosecutor’s Office and asked, “If our fire apparatus goes out, and a bunch of people stand, hand-in-hand, in front of a building that’s on fire, interfering with a firefighter, they are not breaking the law in Washington state. Am I correct?”
“And the prosecutor said, ‘What?’” Pennington recalled, later adding, “I really appreciate and I applaud the prosecutor’s office looking into this. The opinion is, basically, I was correct.”
The prosecutor recommended an ordinance be passed on the county level like the one in Seattle. Pennington said he has started speaking with cities in South Lewis County about this, but encouraged the Lewis County Commissioners, two of whom were present for Monday’s meeting, to draft a rule that would apply outside the cities.
Each city would have to adopt their own rule independently, Commissioner Lindsey Pollock noted, but could be encouraged by the county to do so.
It is illegal, Pennington said, to interfere with a firefighter directing traffic. It is also a felony to assault a firefighter. The rule he was lobbying for on Monday, specifically, would prevent people from hindering medical and firefighting responses.
According to reporting by The Seattle Times, a “slew of fire department staff” spoke in support of the Seattle City Council’s rule before its passing in May, citing an increase in threats, harassment and assaults. People who testified were also concerned about a lack of medical privacy for patients during a response.
On Monday, Pennington mentioned hearing similar concerns locally.
“I think it’s something we should do,” he said of Seattle’s rule. “That’s my personal opinion and it might not be yours, but I hate to see one of my firefighters interfered with and then trying to solve the solution and then end up getting in trouble himself.”
Commissioner Scott Brummer asked Pennington to forward his research to the county for discussion, and Pollock said she was adding it to a county meeting agenda for further conversation.
