There is an article in this morning’s Cincinnati Inquirer about a city firefighter who was arrested and charged Monday with theft and possession of drug abuse instruments.  The story describes the activity leading to the arrest:

(Thomas) Mason, 26, is accused of trying to return $129 worth of drill bits that had just been stolen by another person, for which he got store credit. Once in custody, Mason consented to a search of his car, in which deputies found a spoon and syringe, both with heroin residue on them, the records show.

This pride of the department has been on the FD for three years and is now suspended without pay pending the legal proceedings.

But this item was just the hook for the main part of the story which details a continuing problem in the Cincinnati FD with firefighters committing criminal acts.  In a 3-year span from Jan. 1, 2005 to Dec. 31, 2007, there were 66 firefighters who had either been arrested for a variety of crimes or had been disciplined for breaking FD rules such as failing to maintain vehicle insurance.  While the numbers for 2008 are not available yet, the reporter used the newspaper archive to list several very serious offenses committed by CFD firefighters during the past year.

Once again (it has happened before), the city manager has sent a memo to Fire Chief Robert Wright asking him what is going on, is the department out of control, and what is he doing about it?  Chief Wright, who doesn’t come across as being very effective in all this, has gone public asking the citizens to not judge the department “by a few bad apples.”  Which exposes the seat of the problem right there.  Why do they have bad apples in the first place?

When you have that much criminal activity going on within an employee group that is supposedly screened before they are hired, it is apparent that the employment standards are set too low to begin with.  To put it bluntly, they’re hiring a bunch of crapheads in the first place.  Asking the fire chief what he’s “going to do about it” is nothing more than an attempt to skirt responsibility for the seat of the problem, the hiring standards.

This attitude is brought to light in the fire chief’s statement after pointing out that in the last year they have implemented random drug testing and annual criminal background checks on all FF’s:  “I have to be careful about treading on their personal lives as long as they are able, sober and capable of doing work citizens expect.”

Really?  Why??  We’re talking about people who are being employed and given undisputed authority to roam unsupervised through citizens’ houses.  And he claims that he can’t look into their character before and during their employment on the job?  There’s the problem right in front of their face.

The whole country is going through an economic cycle now that is increasing the numbers of people who are out of work and looking for a job.  I recall the last time we had this situation in the late 1970′s and we had people stopping by firehouses all the time wanting to know how they can get a job in the fire department.  You’re going to see some of that again this year, especially when the job-seekers find out what the pay and benefits are in most FD’s.  For places like Cincinnati, this is a good opportunity to raise the hiring standards, both physical and moral, and start replenishing the workforce with people who are less-likely to turn to crime as a part-time job.  Do you think they will?  I’m not holding my breath.

Alright, let’s get this equipment checked out.  I’m going to make some coffee.

Yesterday we pointed out to you one of the latest blunders that beset the Boston FD, namely a shutdown of the high-pressure hydrants in the high-value district due to improper repairs made by an outside contractor.

This was just the latest in a string of embarrassing and costly mishaps that have hit the department in the last couple of years and it sometimes seems like the whole shebang is starting to unravel.  Just in the past 16 months they have seen:

• A double fireground fatality where it was later discovered that the two firefighters who perished were probably incapacitated, one of them being intoxicated and the other having cocaine in his bloodstream.
• A major pension scandal centering on the overly-generous granting of disability retirements.  This came sailing into the spotlight when one of the “disabled” firefighters won a body-building championship.  Other pension abuses were centered around fire officers conspiring to allow members to work above their pay grade in an acting position long enough to pad their pension benefits.  When the FBI began an investigation into the department’s practices, a lot of relevant personnel files suddenly disappeared from the department.  (That was too late, though.  Copies had already been made.)
• The state is investigating what appears to be a pattern of cheating on the civil service entrance exams.  This was brought to light when a poltically-connected applicant who failed to score high enough for entry into the department was hired anyway.
• A special committee set up under the guidance of the mayor’s office to address problems within the department fell apart after only 2 days in December, 2007.
• The recent discovery that the fire apparatus has been poorly maintained, in some instances not maintained at all, by a shop crew that has no licensed mechanics on it.

Taking into account that many large cities  are governed by machine politics that have little accounability for waste and graft, we can see that a lot of this disintegration within the Boston FD has taken place within the past three years following the appointment of Roderick Fraser as Fire Commissioner, the head of the department.

It is difficult to understand why Mayor Thomas Menino appointed him, unless he was hoping for some budgetary miracle to happen.  Cities like Boston are always bleeding funds due to questionable political decisions and the fire department is a big spender, as is any city agency with a large number of employees.

Fire Commissioner Fraser

When Fraser was appointed in August, 2006, he was 42 years old and had recently taken an early 20-year retirement from the U. S. Navy where his career had been spent mostly onboard warships.  While I have no doubt about his integrity and his desire to improve the FD by bringing necessary changes, his total lack of firefighting-related experience has undermined his ability to perform.

Nowhere was this more evident than last week when, following the fatal crash of a ladder truck, he told the Boston Globe:  “No one brought to my attention that we were not doing routine maintenance.  I have no experience in truck maintenance.”

That’s not his fault, it’s the mayor’s fault.  Anybody who has spent more than 48 hours around a firehouse knows that maintenance is a primary and constant concern.  So why did the mayor appoint such an unprepared man for such an important post?  We probably won’t find out because machine politics are always deep in muck.

Now we have to get our own maintenance program in gear and check out the equipment.  I’ll inspect the coffee maker and give it a run.

“There is something rotten in the state of Denmark”

Thus said Marcellus to Horatio as they trailed after Hamlet.  He was alluding to a faint stink that was drifting over from afar.  Over here that faint stink has been tracked down and it seems to be coming from Boston City Hall.

Over a period of decades, it is a practice of some cities to expend public monies on things that will look good on the surface and pave the way for the officials’ re-election when the next ballot comes around.  Things that can’t be seen, like water mains, are largely ignored and patched up just enough to keep going somehow.

In Boston these practices are starting to catch up in the Fire Department.  On Saturday they discovered that more than 100 high-pressure hydrants in the downtown area were not working (HERE).  It had to do with some outside contractor using an inadequate method of repairing a leak in the mains, but failed.  But the Fire Commissioner’s spokesman for the department made things worse by poo-poo-ing the “inconvenience” by saying that they hardly ever use them anyway.  The firefighters union president hastily pointed out that the engines hook up to them on every fire in the high-value district.

This followed by a few hours a situation where some hydrants froze up at a 2-alarm fire.  Again, the FF’s are pointing at a cost-saving subcontractor who was brought in for the first time last year to do the pre-winter inspections and maintenance on the hydrants.  Before this year the stations did the pre-winter preparations themselves.

These disclosures come right on the heels of the tragic accident that brought the spotlight on the department’s apparatus maintenance practices where it has been pointed out that proper maintenance and upkeep just isn’t getting done.  We’ll go back to what could well be the cause of this sudden falling apart of the FD’s operations tomorrow.

But now we have to do our own preventive maintenance, so let’s get this equipment checked out.  I’ll give the Bunn-O-Matic a good checkup.