Both major parties have nominated their candidates for the presidency, and in a few months, one of those candidates – former President Donald Trump or current Vice President Kamala Harris – will be our next president-elect of the United States. If I had the opportunity to interview either on behalf of public safety and first responders, here are the questions I’d ask:
As president, how will you address recruitment and retention?
The most pressing problem in public safety is staffing. The problem, across all types of agencies, is twofold. First, most departments are struggling to retain experienced police officers, corrections officers, firefighters and paramedics. The loss of veteran personnel to early retirement, lateral transfer or unrelated career fields puts unprecedented stress on departments to recruit new employees, which is an increasing challenge. As our next president:
- How will you use your influence to restore the prestige of a career in public safety and community service?
- What congressional action will you request to ensure that small, rural volunteer departments have the resources to recruit new volunteers and that large, urban departments have the funding to pay their hundreds or thousands of paid personnel a living wage to live in or near the communities they work?
As president, how will you address the opioid epidemic?
Drug overdose deaths have steadily increased since 1999. According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, more than 108,000 people died of a drug overdose in 2022. Deaths from synthetic opioids, mostly fentanyl, have sharply increased since 2014, resulting in nearly 74,000 synthetic opioid deaths in 2022. The burden of responding to drug-related crime, overdose patients, and communities and families torn to tatters from the opioid epidemic falls heavily on local public safety. Lowering the death rate, human suffering and economic consequences is a wicked problem that won’t be easily fixed. As our next president:
- What is your plan to reduce the flow of illegal drugs into our country?
- How much funding are you willing to ask Congress to allocate to the long-term treatment of opioid and other addictions in your first budget request? What are your goals for the allocation of that funding?
- Which harm-reduction initiatives – like needle exchange, supervised injection sites, and medication assistant treatment with suboxone – will you support to assist people who are addicted to opioids but aren’t yet ready or capable of living drug free?
As president, how will you tackle the mental health crisis?
In our industry surveys, What Cops Want, What Firefighters Want and What Paramedics Want, first responders tell us that responding to people in mental health crisis are a significant and, in many places, a worsening problem. Mental health crisis often goes hand-in-hand with addiction and homelessness. As our next president:
- How will you support the scaling of crisis response teams, staffed by specially trained social workers, mental health clinicians, police officers and paramedics, to respond to people in mental health crisis 24/7?
- What is your vision for shifting the burden of mental health care from public safety to the healthcare system?
As president, how will you address climate change?
First responders are on the front lines of climate change. They are called upon to evacuate people from their home as wildfires roar across the landscape and as floodwaters overwhelm flood protection systems. Response to climate change-fueled natural disasters is changing the vehicles and equipment that first responders need, the design of stations to withstand worsening weather hazards and extended power outages, and the training for complex, high-risk all-hazard rescue. First responders also lead the response to worsening and increasingly lethal heat waves. As our next president:
- How will your administration ensure that first responder equipment, vehicles and infrastructure can withstand extreme weather events and operate during extended power outages?
- Describe how your administration and the federal agencies it supervises will improve protections for workers, including first responders, in extreme heat conditions and the actions necessary to protect vulnerable populations, including people who are homeless and the elderly, from extreme heat.
If you were able to represent public safety to interview former President Trump or Vice President Harris, what questions would you ask? Send your questions to editor@firerescue1.com and we may include them in a follow-up article. (Or if you have a chance to speak to one of the candidates during this election season about their support for public safety, we’d love to hear about it!)
