according to the police release<\/a>. <\/p>\nThe next day, a woman at a central Ottawa home assaulted both a police officer and a paramedic, including spitting in the paramedic’s face. <\/p>\n
Three days later, on April 17, paramedics responding to a disturbance in central Ottawa withdrew from the scene “after a firearm was produced,” according to police. <\/p>\n
“The paramedics quickly backed away,” Poirier said of the third incident. “But when you think about it, a paramedic never goes to work thinking that their life is in danger.”<\/p>\n
Some incidents go unreported<\/p>\n
Poirier said violence against paramedics has gotten worse over the last several years.<\/p>\n
Paramedics were assaulted “in some form” over 100 times over the course of 2025 and 25 times so far this year, he said. <\/p>\n
LISTEN | Paramedic chief Pierre Poirier discussing the three assaults:<\/p>\n
7:35Multiple charges laid in assaults on Ottawa paramedics<\/p>\n
In one week, Ottawa Paramedics were faced with three different incidents\u00a0where they were either assaulted or threatened. Ottawa paramedic Chief Pierre Poirier says that this violence is not part of the job and sheds light on the volatile reality of being a first responder.<\/p>\n
A survey last year of paramedics by Ottawa’s Auditor General Nathalie Gougeon found that all 128 respondents said they experienced violence on the job. Gougeon also found that paramedics are not reporting all incidents.<\/p>\n
“We have to talk about this because it’s unacceptable,” Poirier said. “Paramedics should feel safe going to work.”<\/p>\n
‘Certainly this was an escalation’\u00a0 <\/p>\n
CUPE Local 503, which represents almost 1,000 members in the paramedic service, is also concerned about the trend. <\/p>\n
“Certainly this was an escalation with serious occurrences happening back to back,” Carrie Lynn Poole, the group’s secretary-treasurer, said of the string of incidents earlier this month. <\/p>\n
Poole said the issue of violence came up during the general membership meeting that followed those incidents, and that the union’s members want stiffer legal penalties for assaults against paramedics.<\/p>\n
“What happened over the last couple of days is an early warning sign that there should be immediate action taken,” she said.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Listen to this article Estimated 3 minutes The audio version of this article is generated by AI-based technology.…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":623810,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[194295],"tags":[49,48,20739],"class_list":{"0":"post-623809","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-ottawa","8":"tag-ca","9":"tag-canada","10":"tag-ottawa"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/623809","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=623809"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/623809\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/623810"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=623809"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=623809"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=623809"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
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