Things in New York City are heating up.
First, the defund the police movement was very popular in New York City, which led to radical policy changes, which included lowering the city’s force by 2025. It was reported that in 2023 at least 2,516 NYPD cops turned in their badges for greener patures.
Well it appears that the city has decided to now canablize the Fire Department.
Brooklyn Deferal Court Judge Nicholas Garaufis is demanding hearings take place after he cited the incident when New York City Fire Department employees booed NY Attorney General Letitia James and then chanted for Trump.
“Get the EEO [Equal Employment Opportunity] office straightened out. Take some of your brilliant lawyers from the Corporation Counsel and put them in there and start holding hearings. That’s not a request, that’s a direction,” Garaufis responded, according to N.Y. Daily News. “I’ve lived in New York City all my life. I know what the problem is. And believe me, front and center is what happened the other day. This doesn’t have to do with politics, this has to do with race.”
Judge Garaufis reportedly made the statement during a status conference on March 14 regarding a lawsuit settlement between the Vulcan Society of Black Firefighters case against the FDNY.
Fox News reported that part of the reason why Garaufis was so animated was that the FDNY is considerably behind on EEO complaints and has failed to investigate them in a timely manner. According to reports, the FDNY’s EEO office is almost bare due to staffing shortages.
Additionally, NYC’s Ladder Company 11 has been ordered to remove their thin red line American flag that honored responders killed in the September 11, 2001 attack.
On March 22, 2024, the department told the company to remove the flag after Democratic Manhattan Councilwoman Carlina Rivera’s office said in an email that the flag was a “political symbol.”
“I’m reaching out on behalf of a constituent of ours regarding a thin blue/red line flag on Ladder 11 last week (and earlier on Jan 20th),” Rivera’s office wrote to the department. “When asked about the meaning, they claimed it was to honor deceased firefighters, however he brought up that they could’ve used an FDNY flag rather than a politically charged symbol.”
“It is both his and our understandings that private political symbols aren’t permitted to be displayed on public vehicles,” her office continued. “Can you confirm if there are any violating flags/symbols on Ladder 11?”
The flag was displayed on the firehouse’s fire truck by a memorial placard honoring six men – Lt. Michael Quilty and firefighters Michael Cammarata, Edward Day, John Hefferman, Richard Kelly Jr., and Matthew Rogan — who died on the day of the attack.
From the New York Post:
The shocking order came March 22 after a man claiming he was a staffer for Democratic Manhattan Councilwoman Carlina Rivera confronted firefighters at Ladder Co. 11, sources said.
The man pedaled up to the East 2nd Street firehouse on a bicycle and told firefighters he worked for Rivera and that the councilwoman’s office “complained” to the FDNY three days earlier about the flag – which features a red stripe in tribute of firefighters injured or killed in the line of duty.
He called it a “fascist symbol” and demanded to know why it was still up, sources said.
Members of the ladder company are furious.
“I wish [Rivera’s office] would have come at it like ‘Hey, we want to learn about the flag and what it represents’ before they asked for it to be taken down,’” said another Ladder 11 fireman.
Rivera has denied it was one of her staffers and said they only got involved after one of her constituents complained.
