FDNY captain testifies on racial incidents

A notice posted in a Brooklyn firehouse after Sept. 11, 2001, about a memorial service for black firefighters killed in the terror attack was defaced with the words "What About The White Guys?" and other phrases, an FDNY captain testified Monday.

The scrawlings on the notice, which had been tacked up at Ladder Company 131 in Red Hook about a month later, was one of a number of racially offensive incidents Capt. Paul Washington, 49, said he confronted in his 23 years as a firefighter.

"It speaks for itself," Washington said about the defiled memorial notice.

Washington, an official with the Vulcan Society, a black fraternal firefighter group, testified in Brooklyn federal court about the incidents in connection with a lawsuit the society has brought challenging the city's hiring practices for the FDNY.

Judge Nicholas Garaufis in 2009 ruled the firefighter exam discriminated against black and Hispanic candidates and ordered the city to design and administer new tests. Three percent of the fire department's employees are black.

Monday's testimony was part of a special proceeding to determine non-monetary damages such as loss of self-esteem and quality of life, which black applicants who failed to get FDNY jobs may have suffered.

Toward that end, Washington and two other black Brooklyn firefighters -- Lt. Michael Marshall, 55, and Russebell Wilson, 38 -- testified how a job with the FDNY was a springboard to a stable middle-class life.

"You know you are going to have a steady paycheck, not for one year but for the rest of your life," Washington said. "That stability is very important."

Because firefighters work eight days a month, they often have time to work at other jobs, run businesses or study for college and graduate school, Marshall said.

A frequent critic of the Vulcan Society lawsuit, Paul Mannix, 48, a deputy chief from Wading River, said outside court that he was skeptical of Washington's testimony about racial incidents.

"If these things happened and he didn't raise official complaints about them, that raises red flags all over the place," Mannix said.

Outside court, Washington said he didn't file official complaints with the FDNY because he believed such action was "ineffective" and better handled unofficially.

He said a firefighter ultimately acknowledged defacing the memorial notice and was disciplined.