Stats — Stat!

What do the EMS and firing squads have in common? One dispatches ambulances; the other dispatches people. But now, patients are prisoners also.

They are captives of FDNY Commissioner Robert Tucker's "Computer Aided Dispatch," which has suspended and subordinated human judgment by requiring that all patients be taken to the nearest hospital in nearly all circumstances, and to ignore patients' or their family's contrary choices, even in non-critical situations and for rational and compelling reasons.

When facing a firing squad, we may be given the option of cigarette or e-hookah, and whether to have it before or after being blindfolded. At the end of the day, it won't make much difference. But that's not the case for patients who are rushed to a hospital where there may be no medical specialists on staff for their known clinical needs.

Crews have always been mandated to transport patients to the closest hospital in life-threatening situations. They were otherwise given discretion to overrule or honor expressed preferences to be treated elsewhere. But now they have none.

The reason is driven more by optics than medicine. It will neutralize charges of accountability failures. When blame defaults to machines, there can be no human error.

It will also create the illusion of greater efficiency, because the duration of time from the call to 911 until reception at the hospital will be reduced, which will distract the public and reduce pressure on city officials to reduce the lengthening initial response time of the EMS, which is due to administrative deficiencies, including misplaced budgetary priorities.

The problem is logical, not logistical. They're more into saving face than saving lives. Both are elusive goals.

The FDNY's directive is inflexible. It is binding on all EMS crews, regardless of clinical factors and pleas from patients, their doctors and hospitals ideally equipped and thoroughly familiar with their history. 

If the entire team of a patient's attending physicians have been successfully coordinating treatment for complex conditions, and they are three minutes distant from the computer-generated destination, which has no suitable specialist on staff, it makes little difference. If the patient has a broken hip and the nearest hospital is pretty much limited to cataract surgeries, the advice is clear: next time you fall down the stairs, make sure it's in a house more vicinity-friendly.

If a patient who had been participating in a methadone maintenance treatment program at a hospital for recovering addicts has an unrelated emergency,  and is stable and in no danger, they will still be transported to a different hospital where, by law, they may not be allowed to dispense a full methadone dosage to the patient, they will suffer and protocol will have been satisfied.

Ambulances go as the crow flies, because they know the shortest route. Patients (or legal guardians) who refuse to go to the nearest hospital and are given a document to sign, which lets the City off the hook, and the patient is abandoned in situ.

Voluntary and private ambulances are not affected by the "Computer Aided Dispatch" bull. 

And as city governance goes, the bull doesn't stop there.

A bill to be introduced in the state legislature would give our City Council the power to remove mayors from office by a three-fourth majority vote. It is unclear what standard of evidence will be required, but if there is any at all, will it likely be subjective and so elastically defined as to deem it verified and irrefutable? Will there be room for manufacturing and deal-making, based on political alliances and calculations? Temptation for status quo? Obfuscations of "good faith"? 

Will clashes of opinion be massaged to pass as conflicts with the law? Might there be scope for at least subconscious subversions of due process? The criteria are as fluid as the Pacific Ocean. The governor and a five-person "inability committee" (more poetically called a "star chamber" in the 17th century), already have the authority sought by the bill.

A power grab is a power grab, even if it's bedecked as a public interest initiative.

State Senator Jabari Brisport and Assemblymember Harvey Epstein, both representatives from New York City, hope the Council will be pleased with their "home rule" resolution, which Gale Brewer, chair of the Council's Committee on Oversight and Investigations, is rhapsodic about.

The City Council should never be trusted or empowered to override the electorate. The mayor is the servant of the people, not the Council. Whatever disciplinary action may be appropriate should be out of the hands of the Council. In cases of gross dysfunction or wrongdoing, a referendum or voter-led recall process may be viable, bearing in mind that continuation in office should not be determined solely by rolling popularity contests and signature collections.

Numbers in the form of passionate petitions can tell a story but be skeptical of the Council's narration and even more wary of the moral it assigns to it. Remember their indecorous scheme when they offered the plum of three-term eligibility to former Mayor Bloomberg, which was forbidden fruit for all other past and future mayors.

This bill makes as much sense as leaders of enlightened democracies holding military parades on their birthdays or imposing 100 percent tariffs on foreign films and even imported musicians. Will the price of a ticket therefore be double for an orchestra playing Beethoven rather than Gershwin?

When politicians, especially when on their constituents' stage, advocate fixing the government, they're actually fixing on promoting themselves instead. When they exhort us to look into their eyes as they affect sincere solidarity, watch their sleight of hand instead. They want to throw us off our guard as they peddle their self-profiting wares. 

Advertisers have a similar conjuring trick of persuasion.

There's around a half-dozen car insurance companies whose commercials feature the most infantile, non-intimidating adults imaginable with goofy props, including an emu, in cute, whimsical scenarios that have nothing to do with the product they're selling. That's to make consumers confuse the charm of the pitch with the putridness of the product. 

It plays against your suspecting the truth, which is that they will double your insurance policy cost if you make a claim for damage done to your vehicle while it was legally parked and you were at work, were totally faultless, and never made a prior claim over 40 years.

And all radio talk-show hosts call their listeners "friends" and "family" and then urge their audiences to transfer their savings and into an investment with their particular sponsor's gold company, one of many,  which in every case not coincidentally happens to be "the only one I trust.”

Take heed of the barks of the integrity watchdogs in the City Council. Their motives are every bit as pristine as National Public Radio is libertarian. Dispatch their bill to the nearest shredder.