NEW YORK CITY (PIX11) -- City Council passed two bills on Thursday granting FDNY emergency medical services workers body armor and self-defense training.
The bills require FDNY to provide emergency medical personnel with bullet-proof and stab-proof armored vests and self-defense and de-escalation training, city officials said.
“In the four or five years since these bills have been kicked around, attacks on EMTs have gone up double in that short amount of time,” Minority Leader Joseph Borelli said. “They’ve gone up twenty times in the two decades or so since it was first kept track of.”
City officials believe that the de-escalation training could have prevented FDNY Lt. Alison Russo-Elling's death, who was fatally stabbed on-duty in Queens in 2022.
Charline Charles is a digital journalist from Brooklyn who has covered local news along with culture and arts in the New York City area since 2019. She joined PIX11 News in 2022. See more of her work here.
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