A number of STATter911.com readers pointed out the scene below that played out during an apartment fire in Spring Valley, New York on Saturday. Those readers were not happy with what they saw. I have to admit I am pretty jaded and these days it usually takes a lot to shock me. But I was pretty astounded by what I saw in the video as a firefighter and a police officer make sure an apartment is evacuated.
In the video, a woman comes out holding a dresser drawer with what appears to be her belongings. The firefighter walks past the woman and heads inside the apartment as the woman steps aside to let him pass. For that moment, she rests the drawer on the railing of the ground floor porch/balcony where she is making her exit. The police officer, who can be heard yelling “Hey, get out!”, approaches the railing and takes the drawer from her. For a second I thought, how nice, the officer is there to help. Sadly, that was not the case. The officer tosses the drawer and its contents onto the floor.
I emailed the Spring Valley Police Department and left a phone message for Chief Paul Modica. I received a prompt response from Chief Modica who wrote:
Thank you for bringing this incident to my attention and we will certainly do a thorough investigation into it.
As with all videos, we don’t necessarily know the entire circumstances. Maybe there is some important missing information that could explain the officer’s actions. Is it possible he suspected the woman was looting the apartment? If that was the case I would think the officer would both arrest the woman and take better care of the property of a looting victim. Other than that, I am at a loss to explain this. Anyone see something I may have missed or have a better explanation than the obvious?
In 40-years of covering police and fire as a reporter and my brief time in fire and EMS, this may be one of the most heartless acts I’ve seen. Even if you are mad at the woman for possibly ignoring earlier warnings to leave, why would you make her day any worse? Isn’t her day already bad enough thanks to her apartment building burning down?
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The following is from the STATter911.com Facebook page:
Kenny Flynn As someone that was there, those people were told repeatedly to stay out of those apartments. As soon as the officers would turn their backs to address the growing crowd control issues, they would sneak right back in. As you can see at one point in the clip, this area also has a large Hasidic population, who, quite frankly, could care less about police line tape and will constantly ignore it. And the crowd just grows and grows. I would imagine the officer- at that point- is quite frustrated. How many times does an officer have to be “nice” after repeatedly chasing these folks out for their own safety, and they choose not to listen? Not necessarily defending it, but I think the clip in the video deserves some context.
