ny10570

Won't need the raceway. Anyone have a big yard? Maybe we can even BBQ.

Sunday will make 90 days since the TDA bids were closed. Usually rumors on the winner slip out before this point. So, anyone hear anything??

I don't know how they initially chose the areas, but they have attempted to replace tillers in the past. Sometimes successful, others not so much. From time to time tillers are replaced with rear mount spares. I'm not sure how deep the tiller spare fleet is.

Bloomy has been after the FD since he took office. Initially looking for jobs like park maintenance or other jobs they could tackle in the overnight. After public outcry shelved that one he began his crusade to close companies and initially succeeded. Since then miraculously for the past three years the insurmountable final chunk of the budget has been 20 companies. Not 15 or 21 as finances change from year to year, but always 20. This has nothing to do with mutual aid, and everything to do with an agency that Bloomy doesn't see the benefit to.

There have been a bunch of studies on firefighter heart rates. One canadian study just done during live fire training showed hear rates exceeding the predicted maximum heart rates. Another in Indiana or Iowa had firefighters exceeding their predicted maximum heart rate for dozens of minutes at a clip. In one literature review a NASA physiologist's comment was something to the affect of the fittest astronauts would not be trusted by NASA to operate under that kind of physiological stress. Here we are putting middle aged men and women who's day job doesn't involve maintaining peak physical conditioning in these situations. There have also been much more invasive studies measuring just about every physiological response from hormone release to core temperature. Firefighters consistently test in shockingly/disturbingly high values. On paper its impressive any of us survive to retire.

Exactly. Myself and other volunteers from different departments have returned from substantial injuries just on our word that we're ready to go.

nycmedic you couldn't be more wrong. If they did start sending EMS off at the PD text we're going to have more units chasing bogus arrests. That will make our already slow response time slower. Currently we're averaging just over 7 minutes to 1-3 segments. Add fire to the mix and the response times drop to 4:28. This doesn't include call processing. Just dispatched to 84. Firefighters, due to their numbers can quickly dismount and get to the patient. By the time we gather all our crap and wait for the elevator (because stairs scare us) we've taken another minute or two longer than the engine. So since arrest, its been 90 seconds of call taking, 7 minutes of driving, and say...2 minutes till patient contact. Thats over 5 minutes of dying brain. Then we have AHA's research saying it takes 6 or 8 (I can't remember which) to effectively run an arrest. Then there's perks that aren't quantified. CFR's operate in their normal response area. We get yanked all over the city. How many times have you been unsure of the jobs location until you saw the giant red signal light sitting ifo? Then we have to get the patient out of the tiny apt packed with 20 years of crap and 5 floors up. How efficiently can you clear the hallways, get your crap, and get the patient out with just the 5 of you? Drop the I don't need firefighters bull and do what's best for the patient. Multiple hands doing high quality cpr for two minute intervals. Fire will be facing cuts, but removing the CFR program will only cost more lives.

4th Amendment Decision Police were in pursuit of an individual who had just purchased crack during a sting and followed the suspect into an apartment complex, but did not see which of two apartments he entered. As they approached, police noticed an odor of marijuana coming from one door. They had wrongly assumed the suspect was hiding in that apartment. After pounding on the door and announcing their presence they heard noises suggesting evidence was being destroyed. After kicking in the door they saw weed and cocaine in open view. A search revealed crack, cash, but not the perp they were chasing. He had gone in the other apartment. After the Supreme Court overturned the state and if I understand this correctly said that as long as the police did not intentionally create the exigent circumstance they can act. This is where my inner liberal gets queazy. I'm fine with the spirit of the decision, but the ability of PD to create their own PC doesn't sit right. So I put this out there to the law enforcement members. How does this change things?

I'm only concerned for their rights, because those are very much my rights. The law offers no distinction between us and them once we run afoul of the law. Sadly common sense has little if any place.

With a pretty fresh non-union displaced fracture of my collar bone I was able to cruise through the CPAT with little more than one arm. Hardest part was putting the weight vest on the fracture. Almost every failure I've witnessed has been technical; tripping on the step mill, dropping the ladder, etc.

The question was whether or not the officers had the right to force entry into the apt. The CSM article doesn't make this clear. The officers didn't witness a crime in progress. They went to the wrong door, knocked, and then heard what they thought was their suspect destroying evidence. The defense argued that the officers were threatening to kick in the door through forceful pounding and an aggressive tone. They cannot threaten to force their way in. They can ask to come in, but if you do not invite them in they cannot enter (kind of like vampires). This all goes out the window for exigent circumstances; threats to life, risk of escape, or destruction of evidence. Like FFlieu said this really doesn't change anything. This just reaffirms established practice. Here's the link to the majority opinion. It makes everything much clearer.

In this case the justices argue that their knocking did not necessitate the perp to destroy evidence because he still could have refused them access. In that sense they did not create the PC, but I side with Justice Ginsburgh on this, had the officers not been banging on the door the perp never would have started destroying evidence. As a pursuing officer, you know the perp entered one of two doors. He is not known to be armed, from the outside there is no evidence of forced entry, both are locked, and there is no sound coming from either apartment. Can you enter or do you need a warrant? Update, reading the actual decision usually helps. While I still see Justice Ginsburgh's point I believe in this case it doesn't apply. The officers never threatened to kick in the door. They pounded on the door and identified themselves. The perp claimed the forcefulness of the knocking and tone of their voice implied they were preparing to force entry. This decision doesn't really reduce 4th Amendment protection.

JBE, your assessment is spot on. However police precincts don't go away because you can cut units without shuttering precincts. There are absolutely fewer units on patrol now than there were just a couple years ago.

Seth, I think you misunderstood his post. He's not saying forget about the Reservoir, he's saying there just isn't enough flow to make that a healthy body of water. Between all the migratory and year round irds using it. Plus the massive fertilizer load courtesy of the golf course that thing is going to stay nasty. Either pipe in another water source or spend millions, completely restore it, and remove the golf course. But then again...

Is it just me, or is it weird that the mayor always wants to close 20 companies. As the city's finances get better or worse he's always after 20 companies.

That will very likely be the reality of the situation. The courts do not have to act on what we all know. They can only act on what can be proven. If you cannot prove a higher fail rate then you're stuck. If you're expecting a practical decision from the judge, then you didn't read his proposed solutions. Because this isn't about a few individuals who just aren't succeeding. For a variety of reasons entire black and hispanic communities are getting a crap education. While most of these problems are coming from within the community the problems are there and the end result is large numbers of people who are doing poorly on the exam. Because they do poorly on the exam and the city cannot prove that these individuals are less capable you end up where we are. Now you're starting to dip into the whole white guilt part of this. No one that I'm aware of has sued to diversify Traffic, DHS, or any other minority dominated agency. They may succeed, but then they'd be stuck working there. Every major corporation's HR departments are acutely aware of the racial make up of their people. Accusations of discrimination are taken seriously and acted on swiftly long before it reaches the courts. This is the world where affirmative action started. The burden of proof was placed upon the city once the litigants claimed the test was capricious and not an accurate assessment of firefighter candidate competency. Thanks. Personally I feel the last fire exam was the best route towards developing a test that would meet these standards. Combined with the depts agressive recruitment of minorities there was already an improvement and as more minorities got on the job, the racist good ol boys club stigma would have eased and more quality minority candidates would follow. But an a****** stepping in and reached further than he had to. At the heart of all these rulings the laws and precedents are clear. No matter what we know or how we feel about these decisions they are going to keep on coming back this way.

Or being under hundreds of tons of concrete and steel in any structure?? Battery and Lincoln tunnels are no worry. They're burrowed into the bedrock.

Until recently the agility was a scored test also. The faster the time, the higher your score. Still not sure why they switched to the CPAT. It kind of flies in the face of their argument that ranked testing is the only way to identify the best candidates. It was also one of the areas where minority candidates excelled. I know you're not for it, but this bit right here is the argument for pass/fail testing.. You establish a minimum, test to that level and let the academy sort out the rest. Its an incredibly narrow window that the dept traditionally hires from. That absolutely hindered their argument. It was their job to prove that the test was a good assessment for future success within the dept. They can't argue that lower candidates who never even got hired would probably have done worse.

Since in theory the current test is not a predictor of success there would be no additional cost incurred by flushing out candidates in the academy. as for the agility, if you pass the test you get invited to the agility, so there's no extra cost there assuming that the test is just as hard to pass, but not used to rank candidates. Its not so much that you're pre training candidates, but you have to account for socioeconomic differences. You can test for firefighting knowledge. But then you have to offer all the material and classes to teach the motivated candidates. All this racism crap is just a reflection of their lack of education. The disparity is not because minorities are dumb or the test being racist, there's a massive education gap. For 30 years they've been trying to fix it, and its been an absolute failure. So, since fixing the problem is so hard they've resorted to fixing the symptoms.

M'Ave you are 100% right that the test is not the issue. The real problem is the dept didn't recruit. They didn't recruit whites, blacks, hispanics, anyone. They never had to, the tests always had a line around the block and before 9/11 lists would never come anywhere near being exhausted. As soon as they started a real recruiting effort aimed at diversifying the dept they affected real change in both the number of minorities and their scores. This is where an activist judge becomes a pain in the a**. Rather than wait and see if this change was meaningful he jumped the gun and will do far more harm the good. The two accepted ways to address this are a pass/fail test of the skills the dept insists matter or a knowledge based test. Knowledge based test are very expensive and time consuming. You have to be willing to educate all of the applicants to a level where they can not just pass, but pass well. No matter what happens, the vulcans want a number. They don't care the quotas do more harm than good. They taint every minority member of the dept as having taken the easy way no matter how they actually did it. Firemedic, your argument is the exact argument for pass/fail testing. The test is just there cut out anyone who cannot make it. The academy is there to make them into good firefighters. You're right, the argument is not that the dept's test is racist. They are saying that the results have a racial bias, the cause of which is irrelevant. If the result is biased you must find a test that does not have the same biased results unless the test is germane to the job. In NYC's testimony they were unable to prove any difference between candidates at the top of the list and lower on the list once they were hired. They argued the quality of the training is what enabled this equality. They had people testify as to the how much harder the instructors had to work with lower list candidates. They even demonstrated that it took more candidates to fill a class the lower on the list you got. But they were never able to prove list number impacted the quality of the firefighter. Apparently Chicago was unable to also. Technically there is still an EMS promotional. The last one was combine with the open competitive, so when the judge ruled on one he essentially ruled on both. There is rumor of a promotional coming, but its not a new rumor and it has yet to happen.

This is the same argument that lost NYC their case. Its the disparate impact clause. If you cannot prove that those who score higher on the test make better firefighters and that test has a disproportionate impact on any one group, the test is assumed to be biased. When you look at past FDNY probie classes there is no difference in promotion rates from the first classes off the list to the last classes. Until you can make a test that assesses firefighter ability cities are going to keep losing these cases.

Sorry, but you have almost zero right to privacy on the road. Not only are you in plain sight, but driving is a privilege granted by the state. As such they have rights to almost anything driving related you do. That includes how many trips to Hannaford you took last Wednesday. You're welcome to walk, but then you're back out in plain sight and the city is allowed to install facial recognition cameras along your route and track you that way.

These things happen... http://www.nytimes.com/2006/07/22/nyregion/22missile.html

Its not the perceived emergencies that burn people out and turn people off of EMS runs. Its the out right BS runs that we continue to encourage. The tooth ache call, the sniffles, I missed my Dr appointment, etc. Firefighters get just as annoyed at the automatic alarms, malicious false alarms, etc. While only 1% of all runs are major fires the burned out ballast, burner back puff, etc are all real enough where you can understand why someone would call 911.

I'm not sure why plate readers cut down on crime. Its worrisome that they're thinking but at least they're on our side. Mr. Feiner should look into proofreading his e-mails. More to the topic, why waste the money on 2 fixed plate readers. Greenburgh is so large and has so many roads in and out, outfitting every patrol car first seems much more cost effective and practical.