Stratford EMS Lieutenant Says His Services 'No Longer Required'

By Jeffrey LaReau

It is with considerable sadness that I am making my last trip to Stratford EMS Headquarters this week. I am instructed to return any EMS-issued equipment because my services as a volunteer are no longer required.

It is sad because after more than eight and a half years, more than 3600 volunteer hours, countless shifts and ambulance runs from all over Stratford to Bridgeport and St.Vincent’s hospitals, I have been asked to not come back.  

Apparently meaningless, too, are the many hours of planning, administration and special-events coverage spent fulfilling my duties as a volunteer officer.

I spoke up when I had concerns about and decided not to pursue a near-meaningless position as a volunteer supervisor. After seven years of weekly meetings with the Youth Division’s Explorer Post, I chose to take a break and spend Wednesday nights at home.

Seemingly, this is why I was discharged.

After all this service to the Town of Stratford, its citizenry and youth, I thought I would continue as a blue-shirt EMT, ride or drive the ambulance and continue to fulfill the main goal of any ambulance corps; providing medical care to the sick and injured. But this is not to be.

The most disappointing thing is to realize that the person hired by the Mayor to oversee the service has a level of integrity that would allow him to go back on his word that "with the organizational restructuring no one was being let go, only titles have changed." If this is how an 8-year volunteer is treated, maybe his calling for new volunteers is disingenuous as well.

Politics has ruined many things in this town and my continuing in Stratford EMS is just one of them. 

Jeffrey LaReau, (former) Lieutenant, Stratford EMS Special Operations Division

To submit a letter to the editor, please email Stratford Patch editor Jason Bagley at jason.bagley@patch.com.