April 15, 2026, marks the 10th anniversary of Firefighter John “Skillet” Ulmschneider’s line-of-duty death — a tragic reminder of how dangerous our jobs are and how fragile our lives can be.
Skillet was my first LODD as chief of the Prince George’s County, Maryland Fire/EMS Department, and it stays with me every day. Skillet left behind a wife and young daughter, whom I got to know well in the days, months and years after his death.
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The circumstances of Skillet’s death were different from the kinds of incidents we tend to associate with fatalities — catastrophic collapse, search and rescue during a fire, or a struck-by incident on the highway. No, Skillet was responding to a routine non-emergency — some might say “easy” or “mundane” — welfare check.
The check on the welfare call
Here’s what happened: A man called 911 after not being able to reach his brother, who had previously experienced medical issues. Upon hearing the circumstances, dispatchers sent fire and EMS units and dispatched the County police to his home. As was typical at the time, the fire/EMS units proceeded to the scene right away (non-emergency) while the county police placed the call on hold until a police officer was available.
Skillet and the rest of the crew arrived and met the reporting caller in the front yard. He indicated that his brother’s truck was in the driveway, he had spoken to him the previous day, attempted calling him, and attempted to enter the home without success. There was concern that his brother was in some kind of medical distress. The crew recon-ed the home, knocking on and attempting to open windows and doors around the home. They made noise with the air horns and sirens.
Considering all circumstances, the crew made the decision to force entry into the home. Within seconds of entering the home, Skillet was met by the first of two bullets fired by the homeowner. He fired three additional shots, hitting another provider and his brother, before the family member was able to get him to understand what was going on. Skillet did not survive; all others survived.
The police finally prioritized the call, when firefighters radioed in the shooting.
Formalizing the policy
Central to the whole purpose of identifying lessons learned, either a policy is validated or change occurs. In this case, we had an unofficial policy addressing forced-entry calls, one that the crew followed. The lesson for our department was that our policy needed to be formalized with definitive benchmarks. Here’s what emerged:
Crewmembers will attempt to access all normal access points, will make noise and attempts to contact occupants, and determine whether one or more of the following four circumstances exist before forcing entry:
- You see something that warrants fire and EMS entry (injured/sick person, blood, smoke, etc.).
- You smell something that warrants fire and EMS entry (smoke, noxious odors, etc.).
- You hear something that warrants fire and EMS entry (an alarm, a person calling out, etc.).
- There are extenuating circumstances (family member, neighbor, etc., present with specific information).
If none of those circumstances exist, fire/EMS units will await police department arrival when a determination would be made on fire department need.
In this case, there were extenuating circumstances, which I continue to concur warranted the fire department taking action. I believe that the fire and EMS folks did everything right based on the circumstances presented, and yet two crewmembers were still shot.
As a result of this incident, I am aware of some other departments that eliminated “check on the welfare” from their response protocols. That’s a decision only those departments can make, and I support their efforts to learn from any incident.
Public trust, safety, enforcement: The three-way intersection
The anniversary of Skillet’s death raises many emotions with me and others, and I hope to further honor his sacrifice by addressing the relationship between law enforcement-centric calls and the fire/EMS department. It can be a complex relationship, shaped by differing missions, public perceptions and response models.
The public has long trusted the fire service over and above all other public service entities. The public trusts that the fire/EMS department will show up at the right place, at the right time, with the right people and stuff, to do the right thing. Plus, the fire/EMS Department is known for immediate response — we very rarely place calls on hold. Law enforcement, on the other hand, has a different reputation for many. And yes, some law enforcement calls are placed on hold, which can delay response, sometimes for hours. It is this intersection of public trust, public safety and law enforcement where the lines can become blurry.
Pittsburgh: We saw a messy legal case unfolding in Pittsburgh last year when firefighters were called to a scene by the Allegheny County Sheriff’s Office to assist with locating a subject. At the direction of the on-scene law enforcement officers, firefighters cut four holes into the roof of the structure to assist law enforcement officers with apprehending the subject. The subject later filed a claim with the city to cover the cost of repairs to his roof. Earlier this year, the resident received a letter from the city law department, denying his request for assistance to repair the roof: “The facts as presented do not establish any liability on the part of the City of Pittsburgh .... Our investigation has determined that the Allegheny County Sheriffs were in control of the incident and that the Pittsburgh Bureau of Fire (PBF) responded and took action at the request and direction of the Allegheny County Sheriffs.”
Washington state: In another unique case last year, we saw federal agents arrest contracted wildland firefighters working a fire in Washington state. The agents reportedly asked fire officials how to access the firefighters. The fire officials’ level of involvement in locating these firefighters was well documented but has gone largely undiscussed. And to be clear, we are not going to solve the issue of illegal immigration in this article, nor will we offer any political position. This discussion centers on the expectation for fire officials to become agents of any non-fire law enforcement agency (ICE, sheriff, local police, etc.).
Laredo, Texas: Also in 2025, some members of the Laredo, Texas, community began to protest when fire apparatus was believed to be involved in an ICE raid. City officials made public announcement to clarify that the fire department was not involved in the enforcement activities. Linda Willing covered that incident and provided good overall guidance in her piece, “In the age of ICE, fire departments must maintain their apolitical identity.”
Additionally, I have been made aware of several programs that use fire and EMS resources in non-traditional fire service roles. Once again, those are services that each department must weigh and decide upon based on their local conditions.
- DUI checkpoint blood draws: EMS personnel in Pennsylvania have been authorized under state medical direction to conduct blood draws at DUI checkpoints, where they are embedded with law enforcement officers.
- Detainee sedation and restraint: EMS crews across the country have been called to help law enforcement restrain and/or sedate an in-custody detainee. While the use-case seems reasonable when EMS was called for a medical problem in the first place, I find trouble with the purely law enforcement case using EMS to sedate someone.
- Fire-Police: This is not the “public safety officer” concept we saw in the Midwest about a decade ago. Fire-Police have been a staple, mostly in the Northeast, for many years. At least seven states that I’m aware of (Connecticut, Delaware, Florida, Pennsylvania, Maryland, New Jersey and West Virginia) use Fire-Police, primarily to direct traffic and provide crowd control at fire and vehicle wreck scenes or other events as dispatched/requested.
Where the intersection begins to blur
Many fire departments I spoke to about the issue of public safety overlap referenced the use of drones, like in the search for missing persons. The blur occurs when law enforcement agencies call those same drones and their fire department pilots to search for wanted suspects — still technically a missing person but a wholly different scenario.
The legal ramifications of using firefighters and fire department resources during law enforcement actions are really the meat and potatoes of this discussion. I asked several legal experts to comment on or off the record to afford me some perspective on that side of the issue.
Additionally, I have received input from fire departments that have been called to assist law enforcement agencies with almost everything you could think of: locating suspects, using a ladder for a crisis negotiator to reach a suicide suspect, lighting, thermal imagers, drones, borrowing uniforms or apparatus for recon, etc. Some fire service leaders referenced requests from federal officials, like the U.S. Marshals, ICE and Secret Service.
Each of these requests needs to be weighed based on their applicability to the fire service mission, while also supporting our law enforcement partners where we can. When the fire service becomes “the bad guys” in the public’s eye, we begin to lose the broad support we generally enjoy today.
For me there are two hard stops when it comes to fire service resources being used on law enforcement events:
- Using fire department uniforms or apparatus as recon for LE officers. I would not give the police department any of our fire department uniforms, nor insignias to mask the police actions.
- Placing fire/EMS members in harm’s way during law enforcement activity that should only involve police; this is only acceptable for properly trained responders equipped for tactical medic support.
Setting those guardrails is one piece of the puzzle, but it also raises a larger question about interagency coordination.
How well are we really working together?
Looking at this from another perspective, part of maintaining the public trust rests in showing that first responders can work across agency lines to maximize the community’s investments. How those agencies work together is formed through local relationship building, both at the street and leadership levels. Unfortunately, the fire service is too often excluded from upper-level relationship-building efforts.
A recent publication from the International City/County Management Association (ICMA), a broad coalition of public safety agencies, established a set of shared principles for a unified framework for the future of public safety cooperation. The coalition was led by the International Association of Chiefs of Police (IACP), and as you might have guessed, the fire service was not part of the broad coalition. The Shared Principles document produced is heavy on coordination, communication, and maintaining both officer safety and public trust. The fire service needs to be a part of this discussion up front, not as an afterthought.
What passes the legal sniff test?
I have spoken with judges and lawyers who agree that many of these situations walk a tightrope of legal interpretation. Police chiefs and fire chiefs must talk together and work through these scenarios in advance. While the law may or may not be on the side of the Sheriff’s Office in the Pennsylvania case, the fire department is now squarely involved in the discussion, and left with not only a reputation management issue but a liability concern as well.
When it comes to the ongoing ICE situation involvements, I revert to my civil defense training from long ago. After the 1960s riots in Washington, D.C., fire departments established protocols and provided equipment to help firefighters navigate crowded protests and to access fires and injured people, not to uphold law enforcement activities. Additionally, we denied law enforcement requests to use hoselines to help police control crowds, although I am aware some departments did allow the practice — again, a decision that needs to be made locally, and I implore you should not be made without legal counsel.
Nothing is routine
We have used the process known as stress-inoculation to train recruits for years, repeatedly exposing them to the rigors of the job during training to build their sets and reps for when the situation happens in real life. Expecting firefighters to show up at a law enforcement event for which they may or may not have legal authority and have received no training is a recipe for disaster.
Regardless, if we learned anything from the incident with Skillet, it was that regardless of how much stress-inoculation you have had, NOTHING should be considered routine, especially at the intersection of fire/EMS and police — and it sure seems like there is more and more blurring of lines among our first responder agencies. Tread carefully!
