I will be speaking for Angie at tomorrow's exclusion hearing. I have gathered evidence that she was genuinely in diabetic shock when the exclusion took place.
Angie suffers from developmental disability, epilepsy, and diabetes.
The vast majority of Trimet employees have no idea what any of that means.
To Trimet employees, there are no poor, there are no disabled, everybody suffers from the same callous treatment. (speaking generally)
Trimet is woefully unprepared to deal with AMERICANS WITH DISABILITIES ACT riders.
There has been no training of employees on this subject
The ADA to Trimet means stop announcements and nothing else.
I will do my best to get this exclusion set aside.
Meanwhile in Spokane...
ReplyDeletehttp://www.oregonlive.com/pacific-northwest-news/index.ssf/2013/02/man_who_died_in_spokane_jail_h.html#incart_river_default
SPOKANE — The inmate who died Sunday in the Spokane County Jail has been identified as a man who had called 911 for help with a drug overdose because he was a diabetic and had ingested methamphetamine.
The Spokesman-Review reported Tuesday that Christopher J. Parker, 33, was evaluated by fire department paramedics who didn't feel he needed to go to a hospital. Instead, they turned him over to police, and he was jailed on an outstanding arrest warrant.
In jail, authorities say Parker became uncooperative and Corrections deputies shocked him with a Taser and put him in a restraint chair where he stopped breathing.
The Washington State Patrol is investigating the death.
As the spouse of a diabetic, you learn the signs. Someone with an abnormally low blood sugar level will experience very unusual behavior.
I'm sure the LAST thing TriMet wants is to have to explain why it kicked someone off a bus who was headed to a hospital, and that person was found dead on the side of the road...
They will have to explain the issues of ADA (of which they get federal funding) and transit dependent ridership and lastly, training the workforce on understanding the signs of the challenged (mental and physical).
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