newsbuff

Nicoli's decisions have left his home community with 1 less life-saver. For those of you that don't know, he has been awarded numerous life saving awards as well as a congressional level award from Congresswoman Dr. Nan Hayworth last month. It is unfortunate that internal FD politics have resulted in his decision to no longer be a firefighter.
I don't think my own community as a whole is aware of the separation between the the company and the district functions, as mirrored in one of the comments above. I certainly did not understand this for several years after becoming a FF/EMT.
When we hold fundraising events such as a "boot drive", we get dressed in our PPE and hold out fire boots for motorists to donate money to our cause.... "OUR CAUSE?" Unless they have a personal connection to the FD, I doubt that any significant percentage of the donators understand that this $ is NOT going towards training, equipment or operational readiness. This is straight up false advertising. And I am personally sickened by it. I've told my friends and family that donated money annually to the fire dept through the companies annual fund drive, to stop.
I have witnessed repeatedly over the years, tens of thousands of dollars getting spent by my company on parades, annual dinners, installation dinners, christmas parties, etc... And simultaneously get turned down for much needed equipment and stonewalled on training funds by the fire commission. Although these are two separate entities, there seems to be something very very wrong with this. I did not join the FD to drink beer either. I did not join to go to parades.
Ask yourselves: are you going through more cans of ZEP and tubs of turtle wax than saw blades and saw fuel? Our pride should not come from how shiney and clean our trucks are, but rather how dirty and trashed our gear is from having training with it so much. I believe that if we prioritize the trophies that go in a glass case over what we actually signed up to do, we are more likely to end up in a pine box.

Without repeating the sentiments of GrumpyFF, M'Ave, and Crime Cop.... I will say that unless you put on that shield and gun belt every day and deal with the outlandish nature of working as a police officer in an urban environment, then we don't care about what anyone has to say about what a police officer says about an individual who attempts to kill one of our brother or sister police officers.
Did she deserve to die? She made that decision for herself... it wasn't the "trigger happy Po-Po". When she chose to flee the police in a stolen vehicle, refused to surrender to the police when ordered, and then placed two police officers in harms way with a moving vehicle, she asked for it and the police delivered, plain and simple. If she didn't deserve to die, then she should have just stopped the vehicle, shut it off, and exited the vehicle when ordered to by the Police, period.
Did she deserve to go to jail... you answered most likely? Most likely? How about definitely. She was driving a stolen vehicle that the owner positively identified her as the one who stole the vehicle at gunpoint. Doesn't get much more clear cut then that.
Bunch of Monday Morning Quarterbacks who have never walked a beat... someone threatens the life of a police officer, they DESERVE what they have coming to them because THEY asked for it.

Woah, do not lump EMS in there with you guys (you've seen our uniforms. FDNY EMT/Paramedic couldn't be any more clearly displayed without being in lights). They like us waaaay more than they like you.
In all seriousness; scum bags of all degrees and varieties frequently help us, hold doors, offer to carry equipment etc because we are there to help. We don't judge, arrest, or break things. We just solve problems. People not in their right mind (psychotic break or intoxicated) are a whole different animal and can't be included here as they're irrational and will even attack friends and family. No cop is getting a helping hand from the dealers outside the projects. Hell, they can't even get help solving the crimes they're accused of ignoring.
Every cop in every neighborhood wears body armor because people want to do them harm. Every year there are stories of officers being attacked out of nowhere simply because they're wearing a badge. FDNY EMS is issued ballistic/stab rated vests because one member several years ago was stabbed by a patient and his personally purchased vest was credited with saving his life. We are not required to wear them and in more then 40 years not a single EMT or Medic working for the city has been shot. Firefighters get some flack for "trashing" homes during overhaul, but are generally seen as heros and welcomed when they're responding to a call. Police officers are tasked with enforcing the written laws. By simply performing their job they are going to piss off everyone. The people who call them will never get help fast enough and the people they pursue will too often value their own freedom over the lives of those around them.
Now we all have locations and individuals that no matter who we are will be under attack. Airmail sounds cute and the onion that exploded next to us was kind of funny. The mini fridge that landed as we were fleeing was neither cute nor funny. Guess what, as we were fleeing an army of cops were charging in.
Anyone willing to take a car at gunpoint and then recklessly flee the police putting dozens of innocent civilian lives at risk is a piece of garbage and doesn't deserve to share this earth with the rest of us. There are plenty of cases where normal people wind up in bad situations that get them shot. Diallo and Henry are two cases that come to mind. She was not the victim of tragic circumstances, but a predator willing to put her selfish needs above the safety of those around her. We are better off without her. I only hope the involved officers can be as at peace with this as I am.

I work at a transport in the city because of where I live, and its very flexible scheduling.
Transports are what they are, but the people I work with are great.

I work at a transport in the city because of where I live, and its very flexible scheduling.
Transports are what they are, but the people I work with are great.

Date: 6/13/12
Time: Approx. 12:40
Location: Hale Ave. between Hiram St. and Maple Ave.
Frequency: WPFD, WPPD,
Units Operating: White Plains FD, White Plains PD, Transcare, Westchester County M.E.
Weather Conditions: Cloudy
Description Of Incident: Jumper down off of parking garage for 44 S. Broadway onto Hale Ave. Victim pronounced at scene.
Reporters: newsbuff, DR104
Article: http://www.lohud.com/article/20120613/NEWS/306130104/White-Plains-authorities-investigate-death-man-who-fell-jumped-from-parking-garage

Date: 6/13/12
Time: Approx. 12:40
Location: Hale Ave. between Hiram St. and Maple Ave.
Frequency: WPFD, WPPD,
Units Operating: White Plains FD, White Plains PD, Transcare, Westchester County M.E.
Weather Conditions: Cloudy
Description Of Incident: Jumper down off of parking garage for 44 S. Broadway onto Hale Ave. Victim pronounced at scene.
Reporters: newsbuff, DR104
Article: http://www.lohud.com/article/20120613/NEWS/306130104/White-Plains-authorities-investigate-death-man-who-fell-jumped-from-parking-garage

Im glad ehow and yahoo answers are regarded by you as the pure truth. You really are something special, boy.
And yes, I do work in a union shop too.

Seniorcare is still hiring full-time, Citywide just picked up a whole bunch of new people, but I don't belive they are hiring at this time, and the same goes for Lifeline.

SECTMB,
We could b**** and complain about the wasteful government spending day and night until we all are pushing up daisies, but the fact is that it isn't going to change.
Like it was said above, if it keeps apparatus on the road, and brothers employed, do what you gotta do.

SECTMB,
We could b**** and complain about the wasteful government spending day and night until we all are pushing up daisies, but the fact is that it isn't going to change.
Like it was said above, if it keeps apparatus on the road, and brothers employed, do what you gotta do.

Good on the PO for seeing him.

Making a Long Island FD look foolish for having stuff that costs WAY too much?
Not the first, and definitely won't be the last!

I agree, well written post Joe. We didn't look at these calls as nuisance though.
We used to ride around the district and I'd spend a lot of time staring out the window at the neat row after row of little pink houses, block after block, ain't that America. Aided's, lift assists, water conditions, all the service calls gets all of that look behind the doors and locks of the little pink houses. The encounters would soften the hardest cigar chomping brutes of the job. They softened everybody.
There'd be the poor, frail elderly and oft neglected by remaining family or friends, victim; stuck in some torturous position for God knows how many hours, wedged behind a fixture, soiled, humiliate, scared, confused.
And the compassion that flew forth from otherwise stoic members of the services was always warming. Yet the whole scene always enveloped me. The old photos on the wall from when the husband was still alive, from their younger days of love, family, children, photos from later when those kids grew up, got married, moved on...
In the end, this poor compassion-needy person is stuck, helpless on the floor of her bathroom with acid burns from having been unable to relieve herself properly. Each and every single call, heartbreaking in a way. Makes the self-preservation instinct kick in for a lot. Trying to fit humor in some where when picking up.
In a way, Americans are all victims of our collective success, relatively luxurious compared with much of the rest of the world. Yet, here we are, all separated, elderly abandoned and left to their own means. Isolated. Alone. Half of everybody in this country has got some kind of head problem because of how we are all so alone so much even within the hustle and bustle of large populated areas.
Yeah, those lift assists. You've got to construct an iron ring around your heart for the time you do these jobs, because if you let all of that despairing into yours...it leaves scars.

Give that lady a podium and have her read that on national television.

Give that lady a podium and have her read that on national television.

Ladies and gentlemen, I present my case.
Job Security.
That is all.

Taken from the Valley Breeze Newsparper in RI: http://www.valleybreeze.com/2012/05/02/cl/what-is-a-firefighter-worth
(*)

http://www.lohud.com/article/20120427/NEWS03/304270023/False-alarms-douse-firefighter-morale-Nyack-says-nearly-half-calls-aren-t-real?odyssey=tab|topnews|text|Frontpage

Departments around here often call for it.

www.meritmattersusa.blogspot.com
This viscious justice department is showing amazing signs of racial preference. Go ahead, vote for Obama again....
....and this is coming from a guy who hasn't voted republican too often. Ah how things change....

I don't think I will convince you 10570 so I won't try. But to everyone else, what he fails to realize is that every one of the career Firefighters needed to drive to and from the station as well. A volunteer driving to the station should exercise equally as much care as an off duty career member would. Volunteer Firefighters in POV's are not allowed to disregard traffic regs, so why would they have such a high accident rate if there was not an issue with reckless driving? Also, aren't volunteers often already in the station? I thought that they spent a lot of time there training, cleaning, maintaining, etc.?
Career Fire Departmets statistically put many, many more miles on the road than volunteer Fire Departments so the other point is moot.
The reason there is such a high accident rate is that Volunteer Fire Departments refuse to meet the same selection, training, and accountability standards as do career departments.
Just a reminder...my point in chiming in on this thread was not to attack volunteers, just to point out that it is unfair and harmful to career departments and career Firefighters when news articles are written about a Volunteer or Volunteer Firefighters who really screwed up, and they are not clearly identified as Volunteers, meaning they do not meet the same standards as career Firefighters and their actions should not reflect on those of us who do by necessity live up to those standards and whose livelihoods are put in jeopardy by these articles which add guilt by association unless the author properly recognizes the differences between the career and volunteer fire service.
The same issue goes with the arson problem....
This is not in any way a shot at the large majority of volunteer firefighters who are dedicated, hardworking, honest, etc., people.
It just is what it is.....
I will continue to point these differences out in the appropriate forums to the appropraite people for as long as it is an issue but I will not be drawn in to petty, personal bickering.
Yes, I know this post was not my best work grammatically, etc. but I'm trying to cook dinner, etc. and I just felt the need to bang this out quickly, lol.

Uhh, yeah, that's not real....

Uhh, yeah, that's not real....

Uhh, yeah, that's not real....