Video: Controversy over FDNY captain’s recruitment speech claiming ‘firefighters do not run into burning buildings’
https://youtu.be/091HS7CnTMo?t=4m13s
Video cued to 4:13 and claim that “firefighters do not run into burning buildings.”
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A veteran FDNY captain threw water on the notion that the job of New York’s Bravest is dangerous, insisting in a pitch to potential minority recruits that firefighters “do not run into burning buildings.”
Capt. Paul Washington, who launched a landmark racial-discrimination lawsuit against the city, is now getting heat for his “ridiculous” and “insulting” comments last March to a group of young people at Borough of Manhattan Community College.
“Everyone’s afraid — they think they’re going to get hurt or killed,” Washington said in his presentation. “We do not run into burning buildings. We do not run into burning buildings.”
His audience laughed.
Washington explained: “You see a fire, you see smoke coming out of the window. The whole building is not on fire, all right? There’s one apartment in that building that’s on fire. In fact, there’s probably one room in that one apartment that’s on fire.”
