Five Floors Up, page 17
Today’s young firefighters cannot remember a department without tower ladders, without handie-talkies, without power saws, and self-contained breathing apparatus. Terms that today are first heard in Proby school “Hazmat, scuba, 800 mega-hertz”—would have had senior officers scratching their head not so many years ago. Yes, the job is very different.
Or is it? Our mission today is the same as it was when the department was founded 127 years ago. Despite all the advances in technology, we still have the same mission: to save lives and protect property. The goal is indeed simple and uncomplicated; achieving it is ever more difficult dangerous complex and challenging.
Today’s fire officers and firefighters face danger we never dreamed of: HIV exposure, blood borne pathogens, new and virulent forms of TB, more toxic and lethal products of combustion.
The years ahead will see even more dramatic changes. We must always be receptive to change, always recognize that only through change can the department grow and prosper.
Our mission though will not change; to save lives and protect property. And each of us must make sure that something else remains unchanged: the dedication and commitment which were hallmarks of the generations of firefighters who preceded them. Their creativity, open mindedness, devotion to duty and love of the “job” have made this Department great. It is up to us to ensure their traditions of pride honor courage and duty will live on, for our best days are yet to come.
Traditionally, on St. Patrick’s Day, the chief of department leads the FDNY’s marching contingent up Fifth Avenue. That first time Bill did, Betty and Liz watched him go by from the steps of St. Patrick’s Cathedral. As he waved to them, Betty turned to her daughter and said, “If only his father could see him now.” But Betty was just as proud as Bill’s father ever could be. Throughout her husband’s career, she’d been overjoyed at each of his promotions. She’d arrange a family party at the house for each one. She boasted about him to parents and other family. She was also protective of his career as he rose through the ranks. Though she disliked it when he’d be called away from a dinner or some affair they were attending to respond to a fire, she defended the fire department against all detractors. One time, she was watching a news report of a fire on television and the reporter referred to the firefighters on scene as “boys.” The reporter didn’t mean to be derogatory; he was just being informal. But Betty didn’t see it that way. She called up the television station and demanded to speak to the producer of the news program. She refused to take no for an answer, and when the producer finally got on the line, she told him in no uncertain terms that firefighters were men, not boys. As she watched Bill walk by on Fifth Avenue that cold March day, her heart burst with love and admiration for her husband.
For Bill, the only downside to his new job was that it came with an expiration date. He turned sixty-three the first year he was chief of department. Mandatory retirement at sixty-five applied even at the highest uniform level. The clock was ticking not only on his time as chief, but on his career in the FDNY. He knew exactly how his father felt when Cavanaugh’s requirements closed in on him. He couldn’t imagine a life without the fire department. It was an image, however, that would never become reality.
As it happened, the day of Bill’s promotion to department chief was also the date of one of the ugliest episodes in New York City history. The Crown Heights riots were deadly, vile, and the police response was horribly botched. They would also prove to be a mortal wound to David Dinkins’s political future. For Bill, however, the riots in Crown Heights would put in motion a series of events that would catapult him into the history books.
On the evening of August 19, 1991, a Mercury Grand Marquis station wagon with wood paneling on the side sped through an intersection in Crown Heights and was broadsided by another car. The station wagon careened out of control, jumped a sidewalk, and slammed into two youngsters, cousins, who had been putting a chain on a bicycle. One of the children, Gavin Cato, was killed instantly. His cousin, Angela Cato, was severely injured. The driver of the wagon was a Hasidic Jew named Yosef Lifsh. The Cato cousins were Black.
Lifsh had been part of a police-escorted motorcade for Rebbe Menachem Mendel Schneerson, the Lubavitcher Hasidic sect’s influential leader. Anger quickly swelled in the Black community. One common belief at the time held that the Jewish community was taken by surprise at the hatred exhibited toward them after the accident. One writer, who had written a book about the Lubavitcher published just before the riots, proclaimed that Crown Heights was a place “where black and Jewish homeowners co-exist as next-door neighbors, each determined to maintain the safety and viability of their community as a place for families to live peacefully.”3 That wasn’t really the case. Twelve years earlier, a young Black man had shot and killed a rabbi in Crown Heights. The Hasidics subsequently formed private security patrols. In 1978, members of a Hasidic anticrime patrol beat a young Black man into a coma. Around the same time, Blacks charged Hasidics with using strong-arm tactics to buy them out of their homes to provide for the growing religious sect. In the years that followed, the two communities had lived in a kind of simmering coexistence. Black leaders believed that the Lubavitcher received preferential treatment by city agencies, including the police and fire departments. They saw the motorcades the police gave the rabbi, as well as street closures on the Sabbath that caused rerouting of city buses and other inconveniences, as proof of the special treatment. They railed against the Hasidic sect’s wielding far more political power than they did, this despite the fact that the Hasidic made up only 20 percent of the community. They had a point.
Abe Beame was the New York City mayor who bridged the period between John Lindsay and Ed Koch from 1974 to 1977. A diminutive man, so short that aides placed a briefcase for him to stand on when he spoke publicly, Beame was an unremarkable leader during a remarkable city fiscal crisis. Perhaps the biggest moment during his mayoralty was when he went to Washington looking for a ninety-day federal bailout for the city’s financial woes. A now-famous New York Daily News headline captured the tenor of the mayor’s meeting with the president. “Ford to City: Drop Dead,” it read. But it was Beame’s administration that helped to redraw the community board districts in Crown Heights, concentrating the Lubavitcher’s political might. Black leaders challenged the redistricting in federal court, but the case was dismissed. The Hasidic sect used that power to help open senior centers, private schools, and an ambulance force. Meanwhile, the Black sections of the neighborhood saw housing fall into disrepair and an increase in poverty and crime. Many historians today look back at the Crown Heights riots as a pure example of antisemitism, and certainly that kind of hatred was a major element. But blaming it solely on antisemitism dismisses the oppression and second-class status forced on Blacks for hundreds of years in this country and for a generation or more in Crown Heights. Anger in the Caribbean community there had been building for decades. By August 1991, it was a powder keg in search of a match.
Hatzalah, the Jewish volunteer emergency medical service, arrived soon after the accident as an angry crowd gathered. Police put Lifsh in the ambulance and directed the driver to take him to safety while Gavin Cato lay dead on the sidewalk.
The following morning a gang of Black kids attacked doctoral student Yankel Rosenbaum, stabbing and beating him. Rosenbaum, who had nothing to do with the incident the day before, bled to death in a city hospital after doctors failed to detect a four-inch stab wound. For the next three days, Crown Heights was besieged by rioting mobs from the Black community. By the time the riots ended, more than 150 police officers and 38 civilians were injured.
David N. Dinkins, the first African American mayor of the city of New York, was a tennis buff, dressed stylishly, and was a talented orator. But he inherited a city that was as dangerous as it was racially polarized. Crack cocaine had blown crime statistics to unheard-of levels. In Dinkins’s first year in office, the city suffered 2,245 murders, a record that stood until September 11, 2001. Thirty-five cab drivers alone were robbed and killed, or killed and then robbed. Seventy-five children under the age of sixteen died of gunshot wounds. On September 2, 1990, a gang of teenagers stabbed and killed a twenty-two-year-old tourist from Utah. Brian Watkins was murdered in front of his mother and father, who were also injured in the attack. The next day, the New York Post ran a banner headline that read “Dave, Do Something!”
In response, Dinkins would expand the police force, but it would take years for the cops to stem the tide of crime in the city, and many believed the force was woefully mismanaged during his administration. One thing is for certain: Mayor Dinkins and his police commissioner, Lee Brown, had severely underestimated the severity of the situation in Crown Heights. At first, the mayor and police commissioner held back on sending resources into the riot. Less than six months earlier, Rodney King had been severely beaten during an arrest by Los Angeles police officers, igniting five days of riots, and Dinkins believed a show of force would inflame the situation. As for the police commissioner, Brown seemed strangely detached from the riot, delegating the responsibility for containing it to police commanders. The police commissioner’s disappearing act was nothing new. Cops took to calling him “Out of town Brown,” because of a propensity, they believed, for his being unreachable at the most inopportune times. The first cops on scene were tremendously outnumbered and overwhelmed. When the NYPD finally did send in resources, they did so without any kind of a real strategy. Many of those cops ended up standing around looking at each other, or forming useless human barriers. Finally, days into the riot, a few police commanders, including future police commissioner Ray Kelly, initiated a coordinated approach that included fifty police officers on horseback and multiple arrests that dampened the furor. A state investigation released two years after the riots called the response by Brown and other top-ranking members of the NYPD a “collective failure.” For the law-and-order mayoral candidate Rudy Giuliani, who had run against and lost to Dinkins in 1989, and was gearing up to run against him again in 1993, the riot was blood in the water.
In addition to the riots, Dinkins had a host of other political problems. One of them came unexpectedly from his own ranks. The position of New York City fire commissioner has traditionally played second fiddle to its counterpart in the police department. It is the top cop, and his relationship with the mayor, that usually garners the most newsprint and scrutiny. As far as political capital is concerned, the appointment of police commissioner can appease constituents or serve as an outreach to communities that are not necessarily politically aligned with the administration. A mayor’s pick for fire commissioner, on the other hand, rarely moves the political needle. There are exceptions. Lindsay’s appointment of Robert O. Lowery shook the foundation of New York City politics, and solidified his progressive bona fides.
Although not quite as earthshaking as Lowery’s appointment, Dinkins’s choice for his first fire commissioner had a considerable political component. Dinkins had campaigned on the promise that his administration would represent the “gorgeous mosaic” of diversity in New York City. To that end, he chose Carlos M. Rivera to run the fire department, the first Hispanic person to hold the post. Initially, Charlie, as he was known, was the best of both worlds for Dinkins. He was a decorated firefighter who had a sterling career as a fire officer and, like Bill, had risen quickly through the department’s ranks. But Dinkins also saw the appointment as an outreach to the Hispanic community.
When it came to how to run the fire department, however, Mayor Dinkins and his new top fire officer often disagreed. When Dinkins turned to Rivera to make some drastic cuts in the department budget, the fire commissioner balked. News articles of the day hinted that Rivera had been in secret talks with the firefighters’ union, in a sense negotiating against his boss. When the city moved to reduce again the fire crews from five to four, Rivera told Dinkins he wouldn’t do it. The tension between the two men was further strained when Dinkins found out that his fire commissioner had instituted a trial of “bunker” pants made out of fire-retardant material without the mayor’s knowledge. You can’t blame Rivera for revolting against his mayor to keep his firefighters safe. But many of the safety problems in the FDNY went far beyond Dinkins’s control. By 1993, the fire department suffered from a seriously overaged fleet of firefighting vehicles, crumbling firehouses, and scarce resources for training and development.
Historically, about 97 percent of the fire department’s budget was allocated to supporting field operations. The remaining 3 percent supported everything else, including paychecks, diesel fuel, firehouse maintenance, tools, safety equipment, vehicle maintenance, fire safety and fire prevention programs, health services, training programs, and personnel development, which had all fallen victim to years of relentless budget reductions. The department had reached a state of institutional stagnation that any mayor would be powerless against. Still, Rivera would continue defying the mayor and the rift would escalate into a stunning public betrayal during the final stretch of Dinkins’s reelection campaign.
Publicly, Bill had no role in the discord between his commissioner and mayor. Chief of department is supposed to be an apolitical role, and Chief Feehan adhered to that supposition. His job was to fight the fires with what he had, and to lead the people who fought them. Privately, however, he was strongly on his commissioner’s side. He wanted to keep his troops as safe as possible. The relationship between Chief Feehan and Commissioner Rivera was friendly but not particularly close. But Rivera leaned on his chief of department for his counsel. The respect that Commissioner Rivera had for Bill would play a major role in not only extending Chief Feehan’s career in the FDNY but also in bringing him a step closer to a historic accomplishment.
At the very upper reaches of the FDNY’s organizational chart are the deputy commissioners, positions that are appointed by the fire commissioner. Deputy commissioners are civilian posts and not regulated by city civil service rules. Some commissioners rise from the ranks of the department, but others do not. Deputy commissioners of legal affairs and public information, the press office, for instance, often come from media outlets, other agencies, or law firms. The top-ranking deputy commissioner is called the first deputy commissioner, who reports directly to the fire commissioner. Though the first dep, as it’s known, is an enormously important position within the fire department, it is an administrative post and is apart from the uniform chain of command. In fact, it’s often occupied by someone with little or no fire service experience. When Bill was first transferred to headquarters as a staff chief, the first dep was a man named Peter Madonia, who was a baker. He ran a family-owned bakery in the Bronx that had been there for generations. Although not the best analogy, in baseball terms the first dep would work in the front office while the chief of department is the team’s manager. The chief wears the uniform, the GM wears a suit (or an apron, in Madonia’s case).
During Bill’s time as department chief, Marlene Gold was the first dep. Gold grew up in Brooklyn, and had a law degree from Boston College Law School. She’d been the New York Sanitation Department’s deputy commissioner of legal affairs when she was offered the lofty position with the fire department, the first woman to hold the post. But in the fall of 1992, a deputy commissioner post opened up in City Hall in labor relations, a very prestigious position in city government. Gold weighed her options and seized the new opportunity.
To hear him tell the story, in his trademark self-deprecating manner, you would think Bill snuck in the back door of the first deputy commissioner’s office under the cover of darkness. In fact, in the version he liked to tell he got the job because the mayor didn’t think he could do the one he had. The story goes like this: One day a cold storage warehouse on the Lower West Side of Manhattan caught fire and quickly burned out of control. In a matter of an hour or so it had reached a fifth alarm. Chief Feehan took charge of the scene until ten o’clock that night and then handed it over to a staff chief in charge of operations. By then, Bill was sure that firefighters would soon have it under control. They wouldn’t. At five o’clock the next evening the building was still a blazing incinerator bellowing thick black smoke that reached all the way to the park outside the mayor’s office. According to Bill, Dinkins looked out the window of his office and called his fire commissioner.
“Charlie, City Hall Park is filled with smoke,” he said. “Who’s in charge?”
“Chief of department,” Rivera said.
“You better get him another job,” the mayor answered.
The truth was, Bill’s appointment as first deputy strengthened the upper echelon of the department immeasurably. Instead of a baker or lawyer, Bill’s appointment to first deputy brought to the position one of the most experienced fire officers in the history of the FDNY.
Still, it would take him a while to get used to the civilian aspect of his new job.
For the first time in his career, Chief Feehan didn’t wear a uniform at work. Instead, he’d put on one of the tailored suits that hung in his closet. Bill looked great in a suit, a talent he honed on those nights out on the town. The suit he could get used to, but being out of the uniformed chain of command was another matter. One night, soon after he was promoted, he was in the first dep’s Crown Vic heading home from Manhattan when an alarm came over the car’s radio. By the time he reached the Brooklyn side of the Williamsburg Bridge the fire had increased to three alarms. Every instinct from thirty-two years of uniformed firefighting experience informed his next decision. He turned the car around and headed back into the city.
