Compulsive Outrage Disorder with Blindness (COD-b) at epidemic levels in Public Safety

Earlier this week noted Fire service author Dave Statter posted an article about Compulsive Outrage Disorder with Blindness (COD-b). In the days since that article many public safety administrators have come forward about COD-b outbreaks at their agencies.

Chief Gardner was the first to report an issue. “Our policy stipulates that police officer must wear long sleeve uniform shirts starting on November 1. The uniform policy also stipulates that based on the weather the chief can always authorize officers to use long sleeve uniforms earlier. So I put out a memo titled ‘Long Sleeve uniforms now authorized’. The memo then went into detail that it was up to the individual officer to pick what they wanted to come to work in. Day shift flew off the handle. They screamed about the fact daytime high temps were still in the 60s and long sleeves were too hot. They obviously never read the memo text they just read the title and got outraged.

Captain Weiss had this to say about firefighters at his department. “I sent out an email yesterday with the subject ‘Overtime shifts week of October 28, likely to be canceled’. We had four guys going to a technical rescue training class out of state that week. The class though might be canceled due to a family emergency with the lead instructor. By all the nasty reply messages I got, I can tell no one read the body of the email. They saw the subject line and got outraged. Multiple people all worked up that we would run shifts under staffed, and the city was stealing their money by not approving the overtime.”

Finally Lt Saferstein reports this incident. “Day shift has been having an issue that night shift is not gassing up the Ambulances. So I sent an email to all staff with the subject line ‘The Ambulance Driver is responsible for having a full gas tank at the end of shift’. The body of the email detailed that any EMT or Paramedic who was assigned to sit in the driver seat of a unit for a shift would face discipline for not topping off fuel tank of that unit. Everyone saw that dam term Ambulance Driver and went ape shit. I bet I got 80 emails from guys who scanned their certification card showing they are a EMT or Paramedic, with some unkind words about how offended they are at being called Ambulance Driver.”

These are just three examples of COD-b. Our inbox is chalked full of reports of Compulsive Outrage Disorder with Blindness happening all over the US and Canada. Please follow us on Twitter, Facebook and/or G+ to keep updated as we track this outbreak of COD-b.