Scoppetta Learns To Tap-Dance

ONE OF THE POLITICAL TRICKS-OF-THE-TRADE is to dance away from difficult questions by answering or talking about something completely different.

FDNY Commissioner Nicholas Scoppetta is using a variation of that two-step to avoid talking about his embarrassing gaffe of scapegoating three innocent field officers to cover up a scandal in HQ. With a rising public outcry and growing pressure to restore them to their regular assignments, the Commissioner continues to stonewall it.

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Commissioner Scoppetta

Yesterday he held a press event where “quotes from officials” and a press release were issued. The announcement was concerned with a revision of field inspections of buildings under construction and demolition, and is centered around the increased amount of time street companies will be spending on the inspections.

You can read the news accounts of yesterday’s presser in this morning’s New York Times HERE, and Newsday HERE, as well as TV channel NY1 HERE. They keep touting the claim that now firefighters will be more likely to have been inside these buildings getting familiar with them and identifying fire hazards.

But nowhere – nowhere – in the press release does it say anything about the state-owned buildings which are off-limits to the fire department. That is because they are still off-limits. And yet three good men are being punished for not violating the department’s rules and checking out 130 Liberty, the former Deutsche Bank building. But the sideshow barker points the crowd away from that and talks about things other than the fact that stations still have lack the authority, training and safety gear to inspect toxic buildings. And the “Manhattan Three” continue to languish in Brooklyn.

Read the press release for yourself HERE.

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Tom Smith

When you read the actual press release you will that the events leading to D-B fire from the inspection perspective, you will see the FDNY inspection program was a colossal systemic and over bureaucratic problem. If the system was working, why so many changes need to be made? Any FDNY officer who has held the position as the unit Fire Prevention Coordinator will confirm. As in typical FDNY fashion, the FDNY commish & top brass work in the style of "Management by Crisis". Now that two men are dead, (and many more will die 10 years sooner due to the toxic smoke)they have finally addressing the long outdated building inspection program performed by field units. The origional program had it beginings from about the 1950's with just some tinkering around the edges throughout the years. It is now 2007 and the FDNY is just getting around to better utilizing information technology to help streamline fire prevention matters. Too little to late, but it is a start. In city government, the apple cart turns slowly until the powers at be decide to give it a push. But unfortunately they pushed the cart right over three good men. RETURN THE MANHATTAN THREE and a public appology to them is in order!

jack

I read the FDNY's report on the new building inspection, but I couldn't find anywhere in it on how to inspect a TOXIC building? Is the FDNY trying to keep that a secret?