Listen: FDNY’S Black History Month Mess/NYPD Scrambles Radio Traffic in Brooklyn North
A new documentary about late FDNY Commissioner Robert O. Lowery, pictured above (r), has sparked controversy after cutting out Vulcan Society input. Photo/courtesy of FDNY
By Bob Hennelly
We’re starting off this year’s Women’s History month with a candid conversation with FDNY firefighter Regina Wilson, president of the Vulcan Society — the African American support group for the New York City Fire Department. Regina updates us on the FDNY’s last minute cancellation of its Black History Month commemoration and the premiere of a documentary the FDNY produced on the life of Robert O. Lowery, the FDNY’s first Black fire commissioner who was promoted by Mayor John Lindsay in the 1970s.
According to Regina and the New York Times, the Lowery family protested the FDNY’s failure to include the Vulcan Society in the development of the documentary that was paid for by the FDNY Foundation.
“My father would not have been fire commissioner without the Vulcan Society,” Gertrude Erwin, Mr. Lowery’s daughter, told the New York Times. According to Regina, she was contacted by the FDNY just weeks before the film’s debut when she was asked for the Vulcan Society logo for the FDNY to use to promote the event.
In 2002, the Vulcan Society brought a landmark lawsuit documenting the systemic racism within the FDNY that resulted in less than 3 percent of the FDNY’s firefighters being Black while 27 percent of the city was Black.
The Bill de Blasio administration signed off on a settlement that awarded $98 million for Black and Latino victims of that discrimination. That settlement also established a special master to implement the consent decree under the direct supervision of a federal Judge which continues to this day.
Yet, despite all of that procedural history, Wilson notes how the FDNY continues to discriminate against its Emergency Medical Service workforce — made up primarily of women and people of color earning tens of thousands of dollars less than their firefighter peers who are primarily white men.
In the second half of this week’s show, we hear from John Jay Associate Professor Charles Jennings, who is also the director of The Christian Regenhard Center for Emergency Response Studies, as well as Lieutenant Vinnie Variale, president of DC 37’s Local 3621, which represents the FDNY’s EMS officers about the controversial decision by Mayor Eric Adams’ administration to start encrypting police radio transmissions in Brooklyn North this past summer.
The move is part of a long-overdue $400 million police radio upgrade which is expected to be completed by the end of the year. Critics of the move to encryption like Todd Maisel, one of the world’s best breaking news photo journalists, warn that the unprecedented shift to encryption undermines transparency and the ability of the public and elected officials to hold the police accountable for when things go wrong. But, as we hear, there are also some significant operational issues for other first responders including EMS in these places where the NYPD has made their real time radio communications secret.
We also discuss Mayor Adams’ continued refusal to release the documents generated by the Giuliani administration in the aftermath of the 9/11 WTC attack when the US EPA under the leadership of former New Jersey Gov. Christie Todd Whitman told everyone the air around the World Trade Center was “safe to breathe.” Of course, as the EPA’s own Inspector General concluded, that was false. Today, more civilians and first responders have died from their exposure to that toxic air than the thousands who died in the actual attack that day.
Listen to the entire show below: