Fighting Alcohol in N.Y. Firehouses

Nicholas Scoppetta was named the city’s fire commissioner at the end of 2001, just months after the Sept. 11 attacks on the World Trade Center towers, and he recalls his is first year on the job as a sober one, “very heavily involved with the memorials and funerals.” His second year was taken up largely with post-9/11 issues, as well, from making sure his firefighters have radios that are better able to handle such emergencies to lobbying for special recognition for slain rescue workers in the memorial park being planned for ground zero.

But if the commissioner’s first two years were dominated by matters of heroism and grief, a series of incidents at the start of his third year on the job has diverted his attention to more mundane -- and contentious -- issues, ones stemming not from firefighting but from the rough, fraternal culture of the firehouse, and a newly toughened policy to discourage drinking while on duty.

“Firefighting is dangerous enough as it is without adding any factors that might impair the ability of the firefighters,” Scoppetta said last week, during a trying time for a department that in 2001 gained a worldwide reputation for bravery. “Drinking is one of those factors.”

The events that prompted his statement began on New Year’s Eve, when a firefighter stationed on Staten Island was delivered to a local hospital with a head injury that colleagues claimed, at first, had come from an accidental fall. But when the man lapsed into critical condition, they acknowledged the truth: He had been struck in the head with a metal chair following an escalating bout of taunting with another member of Ladder Company 76. Six members of the squad were reassigned to administrative duties. And on Saturday, fire officials announced that one of them -- a captain of the firehouse -- would be retiring.

The discovery of alcohol in the still-hospitalized firefighter’s blood prompted speculation that drinking may have fueled the tempers on New Year’s Eve.

“The Staten Island incident is just a terrible reminder of how dangerous it can be to have liquor in the firehouse,” Scoppetta said, even as he acknowledged that “we don’t know yet” whether anyone was drinking at the ladder company that night -- no alcohol was found when officials arrived at the scene.

That was not the case, however, when an inspection team showed up at another firehouse, in East Harlem, two weeks later, this time unannounced. They found beer and liquor in a locker.

Though the inspectors found no evidence of ongoing drinking, and firefighters insisted that the locker stash was from an off-site party, the fire department transferred four commanding officers of the firehouse. Two firefighters were suspended, pending proceedings to fire them, after urine tests turned up not alcohol, but cocaine, in their systems.

The raid was the fourth since Scoppetta toughened the Fire Department’s stance on drug use in April 2002. Before that, he said, there had been “uneven application” of department rules in that area. For example, a firefighter caught using marijuana probably would be allowed to stay on the force, subject only to random testing. Scoppetta’s directive changed that to “zero tolerance for drugs,” subjecting anyone who tested positive for illegal substances to dismissal.

After the discovery of alcohol in the East Harlem firehouse, he said he would also impose mandatory disciplinary action in enforcing the department’s long standing policy prohibiting the use of alcohol on duty.

Scoppetta reiterated his new stance Tuesday at an event that normally would have been purely upbeat, a promotion ceremony for 15 new lieutenants. The commissioner told the rising commanders and their families that the Fire Department needed to take on a “serious attitude” toward drinking, and that they would have to “bear some responsibility,” as lieutenants, to control it.

But that was not to be the last word about drinking for the department, which has more than 16,000 firefighters, paramedics and civilian employees.

By the week’s end, two officers -- a veteran lieutenant and captain -- had been suspended without pay after they were alleged to have been drinking beer Thursday, in uniform, in a Lower Manhattan karaoke bar they were supposed to be inspecting.

On Friday, a spokesman for the department’s union, the Amalgamated Firefighters Assn., declined to comment on the alcohol incidents, and the commissioner’s no-second-chance stance. But the union’s website posted its advice to members in a memo, “If the Department Raids Your Firehouse ...”

The memo tells firefighters to contact a union representative and lawyer if department inspectors seek urine tests for “any or all members present.” The firefighters also “should make it clear that they do not consent to the testing and will submit to it only if ordered by the chief in charge,” the union said.

A lawyer by training, Scoppetta is no stranger to the tensions inherent in a job that calls not only for support for uniformed services in their dangerous assignments, but also monitoring them for transgressions. Scoppetta served as deputy mayor and commissioner of investigation under former Mayor Rudolph Giuliani.

New York’s 31st fire commissioner knows that some members of his force probably believe a little drinking in the firehouse is OK, part of the bonding process essential to such work.

“Well, it is one of the strengths of the Fire Department that they feel close to each other and to their unit and to their house. There’s a tremendous feeling of family,” Scoppetta said. “But in the last analysis, they’re on duty in a very hazardous occupation.

“Despite the good thing about the loyalty to the unit, we’re drawing the line.”