Scalpel, sutures . . . guns
Qns. hosp is city’s 1st with armed guards
A Queens hospital has become the first in the city to get full-time armed guards — part of a sweeping move by the behemoth Northwell Health system to staff all of its ssites with current and former cops wielding guns.
Last year’s fatal shooting of a doctor at Bronx-Lebanon Hospitala Center put the program on the fast track, said former NYPD Detective Scott Strauss, Northwell’s assistant vice president of corpporate security.
“Why wait until tragedy sstrikes?’’ Strauss told The Post.
Northwell — the former North ShShore-Long Island Jewish Health SySystem — has 23 hospitals including six in the city.
It put its first armed security force at North Shore University Hospital in Manhasset, LI, on March 6, then expanded to Long Island Jewish Medical Center in New Hyde Park, Queens, on July 2.
The guards are all current or former cops and carry the same 9 mm handguns and holsters as NYPD officers, Strauss said.
Northwell has also formed a “partnership” with the NYPD to hire officers by the hour at some sites. It is already using the cops at Lenox Health Greenwich Village on weekends.
A former city paramedic hailed the move.
“I have seen a lot of s--t go down, especially in New York City, where angry families, gang members, so-called relatives have shown up in the ER and want to fight,’’ he said.
Strauss said staff and patients are overwhelmingly in favor of the guards and that Northwell plans to have them in all of its hospitals in the coming months.
Other local hospitals are reluctant to jump on the bandwagon.
“Having guns in a hospital increases the risk of human harm,’’ said New York City Health and Hospitals spokesman Bob de Luna. Its guards carry only batons. The former city paramedic called that lunacy.
“The patients are sitting ducks,’’ he said.
Howard Stewart, 28, who was visiting a friend at LIJ on Monday, agreed, saying, “The more security, the better.’’
Christina Grant, 26, also at the hospital, was less enthusiastic.
“You really gotta walk past armed guards to go see the doctor?” she asked in disbelief.