California EMT Accused of Lying on Job Application
An EMT has been charged with felony perjury after he continued to work on an ambulance after a conviction.
A Northern California emergency medical technician has been charged with felony perjury after The Sacramento Bee reported he continued to work on an ambulance after a conviction for using a hidden camcorder to videotape a nude teenager.
Robert Eugene Chaney, 37, of Scotts Valley was arrested by law enforcement officials in Santa Clara County, where prosecutors say the rescuer perjured himself on an EMT application he submitted to that county's Emergency Medical Services agency.
Chaney was arraigned April 18 and will appear in Superior Court in late May, said David Tomkins, an assistant Santa Clara County district attorney.
"We take these kinds of things very seriously," Tomkins said.
Thomas A. Salsiccia, a San Jose lawyer representing Chaney, did not respond to messages seeking comment.
The criminal charge was filed a month after a Bee investigation found that rescuers with past convictions manage to work as EMTs by hiding their criminal backgrounds and taking advantage of flaws in the state's patchwork licensing system.
If convicted of the felony count, Chaney could face two to four years in prison.
In February, The Bee reported that Chaney continued to work for American Medical Response after March 2006, when he became the first person in Santa Cruz County convicted under a new state law prohibiting the use of hidden cameras to record private images.
The Bee's investigation of lax oversight of troubled rescuers led Sen. Roy Ashburn, R-Bakersfield, to introduce legislation requiring mandatory criminal background checks and state licensing of California's 70,000 EMTs. At a news conference Friday, Ashburn said he wants to include an "urgency clause" in the bill to speed it up.
"We now have specific examples throughout California where people have become paramedics or emergency medical technicians rolling on ambulances that have problems in their background," Ashburn said in a prepared statement.
Chaney had been charged in 2005 with using a concealed camcorder in a bathroom to videotape a teenage girl undressing for a shower, a misdemeanor.
Though he continued to work for American Medical Response even after his conviction, Santa Clara County emergency medical officials said they were not aware of that conviction.
AMR initially said the conviction was not related to Chaney's work as an ambulance EMT and warranted no further action. However, the company put Chaney on administrative leave after Santa Clara County began investigating.
It was then discovered that, in January 2006, Chaney had claimed to be an EMT certified by the Sierra-Sacramento Valley Emergency Medical Services Agency. But he did so based on an EMT certification card that officials now allege was forged.
Chaney's Sierra-Sacramento Valley certification had expired in October 2005 and Victoria Pinette, the Sierra-Sacramento Valley executive director, said he never applied for a renewal.
If he had applied, Pinette added, the certification would not have been renewed because of his conviction.
AMR spokesman Jason Sorrick said this week that Chaney had been fired, adding that ambulance company officials are fully cooperating with the Santa Clara authorities.
The Bee's Andrew McIntosh can be reached at (916) 321-1215.
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