Referring to a video that was made of his half-hour recruiting pitch last spring to students at Borough of Manhattan Community College, Fire Capt. Paul Washington said in a phone interview, “The video would speak for itself.” He speculated that the person who provided The Post with the video or the paper’s reporter had other reasons for wanting to embarrass him.
Not Running Into Infernos?
Viewed in its entirety, it appeared that Mr. Washington’s remarks were aimed at giving the students a non-Hollywood version of the day-to-day rigors and risks of a job he repeatedly praised. He expressly said on the video that the job could be “dangerous” and that Firefighters came “under a lot of stress” and had “to show some guts” to succeed.
“You see the movies, they run up the stairs and everything’s burning; it’s not like that,” he said on the video. “It can be a dangerous job, but it’s not nearly as dangerous as people think.”
He told the students that with the notable exception of 9/11, roughly two Firefighters die annually in the line of duty. “What’s the chances you’re going to be one of those two people who die out of 10,000? I’ll take those chances. It’s a very small risk,” he said. “Let’s be honest—you’re talking about unarmed black men being shot and killed. The neighborhoods we live in are more dangerous than two in 10,000 people dying.”
UFA: Insulting to Us
The Post’s account had sparked a quick response on social media from Uniformed Firefighters Association President Gerard Fitzgerald, who wrote “the idea that being a firefighter is somehow not dangerous is ill-informed and insulting to the brave men and women who make up the FDNY.”
It was not clear whether Mr. Fitzgerald had seen the entire video or was merely reacting to the Post’s reporting. A call to the UFA was not returned by press time Sept. 1.
The paper’s account of Mr. Washington’s remarks also got a strongly-worded response from his own union, the Uniformed Fire Officers Association. “The dangers cannot be measured by the loss of life alone,” it said in a statement signed by its entire executive board. “There are hundreds of active and retired members who have been stricken with injuries, cancers and lung ailments from performing their duty. Yes, we do ‘run’ into burning buildings; it is our job. If one does not react and ‘run’ into a fire upon hearing a report ‘children trapped,’ ‘people trapped,’ perhaps this is not the profession for you. The UFOA encourages any individual who has a passion and/or desire to become a firefighter to do so; it is one of the most rewarding careers one can have.”
Those criticisms echoed quotes from the Post article from a former FDNY trainer, Pete Critsimillios, who blasted Captain Washington for minimizing the risks of firefighting. “For him to downplay those dangers to potential applicants, in my opinion, borders on criminal,” the former FDNY trainer said, according to the Post.
Key Figure in Bias Case
Mr. Washington led the African-American fraternal firefighter group when it launched its racial-discrimination lawsuit against the City of New York. In 2014, the de Blasio administration opted to settle that case for $98 million and agreed to reform its recruiting and hiring practices. In just the last few years, the FDNY’s diversity has dramatically increased, with graduating classes including near-majorities of people of color, where prior to the settlement minorities were barely above 10 percent of those graduating the Fire Academy.
In the video, students expressed curiosity about the origins of the Vulcan Society and Mr. Washington told them it had been founded by Chief Wesley A. Williams in 1940, when the FDNY still had segregated sleeping arrangements.
Mr. Washington described to them the FDNY as an environment where it was possible to advance not “based on who you know” but on what you know. “To go up in rank is based on tests, not who you know or who likes you,” he said. “I have been promoted twice. Believe me, it was not based on who liked me. If that was the case, I would never have been promoted.”
The former Vulcan president during the video, which was posted by Baruch College’s Percy Sutton Urban Male Leadership Academy, encouraged his audience to start tracking the civil-service listings for jobs other than firefighting as stepping-stones to a career with the city.
Son of a Firefighter
The audience of a few dozen, mostly students of color, was particularly interested in Mr. Washington’s path to the FDNY, and peppered him with questions. “I had a great advantage. My dad was a firefighter,” he said. “But he said I should take every test” the city offered.
He described how when he was away at college in Pennsylvania getting his degree in geology, his father called and told Paul that he had signed him up to take the test to be a Federal Air Traffic Controller. “I had no idea what an Air Traffic Controller did,” he said.
Mr. Washington told the class he took the test as his father had instructed, graduated college and did not think another thing about it. One day, out of the blue, while working in The Bronx at a property-management job, he got a call from the FAA. “And now they called me and asked if I still wanted to be an Air Traffic Controller up in Alaska,” as he originally signed up for when he took the test. “I ended up doing that for a couple of years,” he said. “You got to keep you options open.”
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