Our final posting yesterday covered a 2-station volunteer fire department in Tennessee that was ordered shut down by a judge. He didn’t just order it to be closed, but also to be dissolved. Now that is an extreme measure. Normally the people who run local municipalities try to give volunteer fire and ambulance squads every benefit of redemption whenever something bad happens. In this case it was the volunteer fire chief who was playing loose with the department’s credit cards.
But the county was fed up with the ongoing fraud that has persisted for over three years despite their warnings and the State Attorney General stepped in and ended it. Finished. Gone. All that equipment and real estate and “sweat equity” will be dispersed.
Unfortunately, this is not such a unique event these days. In Long Island there is a wave of prosecutions going through the dozens of volunteer fire departments. It’s getting so busy in the courthouse that you need a program to keep track of the parade of “volunteers” who have been fiddling the books, in some cases for years.
Just recently we have pointed out similar happenings with an ambulance squad in upstate New York involving the town’s billing clerks, and a like event in Ohio.
So why is there such a large number of departments nowadays getting sucked into thievery and embezzlement scandals? There has always been the occasional “bad apple” being caught. But now it seems to have expanded. Firegeezer has a theory that partially explains the sudden expansion of financial frauds.
The problem leads back to what we’ve been talking about lately and that’s the recruitment of new members. In years past, you didn’t just walk into a VFD and join up. It was a closed group and anyone interested in joining had to first know a member personally who would vouch for them. The prospect wasn’t even handed a membership application unless they were informally pre-screened. Integrity and honest desire were demanded before any consideration was extended.
Then if you did get the application and sponsor, you filled it out and waited while the Membership Committee checked your background. In the case of younger or Junior applicants, truancy was an automatic disqualifier. Employment stability and clean criminal record were demanded.
After you cleared all the entrance hurdles and were voted in at the monthly meeting, you still had a probationary period where you were judged by your level of participation, efforts to learn and your ability to get along with the other members. Yes, you had to be “liked.” If you were a real snot, you got the boot.
But now, with this cultural shift away from volunteering, membership applications have stopped being submitted. Anyone who knocks on the door is gratefully let in with hardly a second look. And when you let down the protective barriers, the scoundrels will take advantage of the opening and slip right in there.
I’m not saying that people join with the primary purpose of getting their fingers into the petty cash box, but this relaxation of standards has admitted more and more people who have the propensity to think and act that way after they get there.
We have a complete flip-flop in minimum character and physical standards now. Over the past years the qualifications for FF and EMS after you join have gone up and up and up. But the qualifications before you get in have gone down and down.
Is it really so important to fill the rolls that you have to open the doors to any warm being that walks on its hind legs? Maybe we should be looking for another solution.
But first let’s get the equipment checked out. I’m going to get the coffee pot started.
