Whitlock dismissed Lawson, the vice-commander of the Marion County Rescue Squad at the time, after the incident.

Lawson responded to the charge through his attorney, Elmer George, last week.

George said Whitlock was wrong to dismiss Lawson and probably does not have the authority to impose such a penalty in the first place.

Whitlock recently accused Lawson of contradicting an order to let ambulance personnel decide when Marion County Rescue Squad members could leave the scene of an accident, abort a call or slow a call. Whitlock said he personally told Lawson and other members about the policy at a meeting. The next day, Whitlock said, a fax from Lawson to the EMS building outlined a new policy that contradicted the one Whitlock described the night before.
Whitlock said he had warned the squad that he would dismiss anyone that challenged his order.

A letter sent to the dispatcher of the City of Lebanon said that "by order of the Marion County Fiscal Court, and the office of Emergency Management, (Lawson) is no longer a member of the Marion County Rescue Squad)." The letter was also signed by County Judge-Executive Dave Hourigan.

George said Lawson's fax was merely a rough draft of a policy Lawson and Commander Scott Lawson (the two are not related) were going to discuss with Hourigan.

George described the incident like this.

The squad was in the process of upgrading its "Signal 8" policy when Whitlock gave his order. "Signal 8" is the term used when emergency services personnel are being told they are no longer needed at an accident scene.

Dan Lawson told Whitlock about the work already underway and Whitlock said there had to be a policy in place for the moment so he was telling them which one to use.

Lawson said he wrote down some ideas he and other squad members had discussed and wanted to present to Hourigan. Hourigan had told the members they could discuss new policies with him, George said.

Since there is no fax machine in the rescue squad's headquarters, Lawson asked his wife to send his work over the ambulance squad's fax machine.

Someone took the fax and showed it to Whitlock and Hourigan, George said.

"This fax was merely an idea being kicked around," George said. "If there was no action taken on it, why is this being held against Dan? I asked (J.T.) why can't we sit down and talk about this to resolve it. He just refused. Why would you kick off a member that even (J.T.) says is a good member?"

George represents the rescue squad in legal matters but said there was no conflict of interest because "a far greater number of rescue squad members support Dan."

George said Lawson was following the orders of his commander when he had the fax sent to the EMS building. Scott Lawson confirmed that he did ask Lawson to retrieve the information.

George said the rescue squad is a separate entity from the county and has its own constitution and by-laws. Therefore, he said, Whitlock didn't have the authority to dismiss Lawson.

A review board made up of squad members should have decided if Lawson did anything wrong, George said.
Lawson has been a member of Marion County's squad off and on for 10 years and has never had any problems, George said. He's been an officer for four years.

"The problem is, we have two or three people that have been voted out of control and they're trying to get back in," he said. "What J.T. should have done is let the process run its course. This entire matter should have been handled by the rescue squad."