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.