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@Brooklyn
Memoir (12)@
Network TV coverage
Kings County Hospital was highlighted in the evening news broadcast of several network TV channels while I was a Resident. You may think it was a bad news. You are right. I'll tell you about it in detail.
There was a prison ward at Kings County Hospital, where criminals were treated. I visited once on a consultation to the prison ward. When I entered the ward, the door was slammed behind me with a large noise.
It was not so pleasant an experience.
Anyway, Kings County Hospital accepted criminals as patients. One day, a criminal with a minor injury was brought in by the police to the surgical outpatient department. He had escaped and barricaded himself in a basement of the hospital with a hostage late one afternoon.
Policemen encircled the building and tried to persuade the suspect. The suspect resisted and remained shut in with a hostage in the basement.
The suspect remained to be there until the next day. Kings County Hospital was never closed when the incident was going on. The occupied site was off limits, but the hospital activities went on as usual. Isn't this amazing?
It is unimaginable in Japan at least.
At other times, we had several bomb threats in the ER. The security personnel ordered the evacuation and searched for bombs. They usually released the evacuation order within an hour. We would start the routine work all at once.
By the way, during lunch on the 2nd day of the hostage incident, hundreds of onlookers gathered. They were biting hamburgers bought at a stand set up just to cater to the crowd. I was one of them, of course.
The suspect surrendered on that same night. He surrendered shouting " Don't shoot.h He thought he was surely going to be shot down during the surrender. I heard of how it ended on the TV news on that evening.