SOUSGT

But its the residents who will loose. Right now the department has 13 members for fire and EMS. I wonder how many calls the board of trustees will cover.

The problem with this fuzzy math is you are not comparing apples to apples. Yes NYC pays less in taxes than Yonkers and Yonkers pays less per capita then New Rochelle. But what you fail to point out is the more residents per square block, generally you will find that there a smaller tax levy per capita. Also all four cities identified have a substantial commercial base and collect additional revues through sales (and in some cases income) taxes. The true cost of fire protection may not be reflected. Also some of the costs in providing fire protection may be paid for by other city agencies. The average resident of town next to a city will always pay more in taxes as they have to spread the tax load among fewer properties. We see this every year in the County wide levy. Let’s take the park budget as an example (nice neutral department). Every year the County determines the budget for parks is X. that line item is spread throughout the county and each household should be assessed the same! But it’s not! There is a complicated formula based on the total value of the property within the taxing municipality and then the value of the property. I believe you will find that the cost for county parks per capita in City A is less than the per capita costs in Town J. Two years ago I evaluated the property tax in 15 volunteer fire districts in Westchester and found that the average property tax bill for fire protection was higher than the average was in the 3 cities listed above. This may be the case but there are two issues that you fail to examine: 1) Was the total town and County tax levy (for those town/village districts) in line with the 3 cities listed? If you looked at the full time police department budgets, did they have the same per capita cost as the cities PDs? 2) If the volunteers were replaced with full time employees, how would that effect the tax levy as compared to the cities identified?

There are several things "disturbing" about this recording: 1) It is a recording and not a video. We have been told that the guy was just walking down the street. We have no way of knowing any of his actions prior to the officer spotting him. 2) We also do not have any indication were the officer was other than in close proximity to the subject. Did the officer have cover or was it a naked confrontation? If the officer is caught in the open with no cover, then unless the guy is in uniform, he’s going to the ground. 3) Regardless if the guy has a permit or not if the officer gives instructions for his safety or that of others, follow his instructions Period! 4) The subject was recording this incident. He was able to quote rules. It seemed like he was looking for a confrontation. 5) The officer involved identified himself a sergeant. A sergeant in a City police department is not a kid out of rookie school. His instructions were clear, concise and he maintained control. There was no panic in his voice. The subject tried to manipulate the confrontation to seem like he was a victim being picked on by the police. As we cannot see what is going on, it’s hard to know what’s actually occurring. I don’t know the area or the people involved. I don’t know how much the above contributed to the instructions that were given. But the fact is, if a police officer with a gun pointed at you gives you a command, obey it, period, end of story. As you can see by my profile, I am a retired police officer. I worked in a city and was involved in a shooting and several almost shootings. On one occasion, almost shot a detective in my own department who jumped a gun call. I responded to a man with a gun call and was the first uniform on the scene. I saw a guy standing over a man on the side walk with a shotgun in his hand. I instructed him to drop the gun several times and he failed to follow my directions. As he turned toward me with the gun still in his hand, I started to squeeze the trigger and continued to yell for him to drop the gun. At the last second, I saw a portable radio in the other hand and it gave me enough to pause. He then yelled he was a cop. A second later he later he would have been dead and I would have had to live with the fact that killed a good guy. Later, asked him why he did not do as I commanded. He told me that I should have recognized him and known he was a police officer. He had sun glasses on and just gotten his hair cut and I didn’t recognize him. It happened a long time ago and I still have bad memories about it.

How many Secret Service Agents does it take to push the beast? Looks like they missed a slight detail! http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-13507728

Actually Actually if you look at the wording it states: “who responds to a request to provide medical or other assistance to a person”, There is no mention of a patient. Nor is there any allowance of what could be photographed. Therefore the person covered by the law could not be photographed at all (unless it was done in the performance of the responders duties). The law in its wording states responds to provide medical or other assistance to a person. This could be any thing call from a blown tire to a fatal. If I read this right, a police officer with a dash cam responding to a call of a disabled motorist has to turn it off before he arrives in order not to photograph the person unless he suspects a crime may have been committed or the recording has to do with his/her official duties (I don’t know if protecting the officer counts), the same car that comes upon the scene of a MVA involving a motorcycle can leave it on. It seems that the camera crew from COPs are OK unless they are moonlighting from their day job in emergency services. Seems like they took a decent concept and screwed it up. Surprise, surprise.

If the laws were changed to require that all entitlements or madates had to paid for by the body that approves it, You would see programs more in line with other states. State and Federal legislators can approve what ever would get them elected as they don't have to figure out how to pay for it. Its called pandering for votes. In NY the government has the perfect storm for taxes. The state legslators pass a law to help out a group of people. they dont have to fund it so they can campaign on a platform that shows they care about their constituents. The County legislators campaign on the fact that "we had no choice to raise taxes, its those dam unfunded mandates". In states without county government the state legislators have no one to mandate. Towns cant raise the kind of money required for social programs so the state has to fund all the programs. No legislator wants to be known as the guy who raises taxes. Maybe its time for the Local and County officials stand up to the State and say enough. Your generosity is bankrupting us. You want us to limit our taxing ability yet you keep jamming costs down our throats. Yea right. who am I kidding. I do believe the cap is coming, our beloved legislator had better have a plan or it will get mighty interesting.

One of the reasons they have a thriving economy is that they do not have the high cost of living that we enjoy in NY. Property taxes have increased nearly 100% in the last 12 years alone. the money that we spend on government is insane. Granted the biggest part of the tax bill is the school and County taxes. Funny thing is the town provides the most services and has the lowest part of the tax bill. I was reading a paper in Connecticut in March and there was a story about the annual school budget for a town. The schools superintendent reported that the vote failed to over ride the cap increase. so the tax increase would be limited to (I don't remember the amount but I believe it was around 2-3%). I don't know if this is statewide or a limit put on by that town. The superintendent then said something I never thought I would hear from an educator. He didn't rant how the children would suffer. They would all flunk out or the schools would crumble, but he said " I guess we will have to learn to live within our means". While we are on the subject of Connecticut, a similar house pays half the taxes (even when you include the personal property tax) that we do in NY. Most towns in Connecticut seem to be doing OK (or at least have the same issues that we do). Maybe some of the guys in Connecticut could comment on this? I know the grass is always greener on the other side of the fence, but the way we are taxed in NY they tax the grass also!

You cant make this stuff up. This is from an official publication of the CDC. An agency of the US Government. http://emergency.cdc.gov/socialmedia/zombies_blog.asp

The article lacks one important peice of information. While they report the town has 12 fire disctricts, they fail to mention the size of the town or number of residents served. is a district 1 square mile or 100? not being from the area I cant guess. It would have been nice if the reporter did his homework.

[Our siren only sounds for reported fires in recent years. In this day and age I assume most depts supply pagers to its members and with the new text messaging (while it isn't perfect) I have to agree that the sirens are kind of out dated. It seems like it is just making a public relations problem and isn't really worth it. My department has had sirens and a horns for 60 years. The sirens are gone but we still use a horn although greatly reduced. As is the case with any electronic radio, the pagers are subject to failure:. There have been a number of failures over the years. The issues resulted from single unit failures (someone in the family turned the pager off, the battery died because the pager wasn't seated properly or the pager was in a "dead spot") to department wide transmission problems. Members responded to the calls asking what wasn't the call toned out? fortunately the horn woke them up. Until departments transition to an implanted, nuclear powered, two way pager that confirms message delivery with an automatic redundant notification system, the horns/sirens are a valuable back up. Also what is next: The mechanical siren wakes up my kids, can you muffle it or wait until you are three blocks away before you use it. Can you limit the air horns to daytime use, Do you really need those sirens on the trucks, cant you use the horn or bell instead?

I thought it was Who could be calling this time of night?

Cogs, I think you hit on the central theme: DON'T MESS WITH THE US! If you do, we will hunt you down, it doesn't matter how long it takes or the cost. We will get you. We are a very tolerant people and some think we want to live decant life style and don't have a stomach for a fight any longer. This thought may have been confirmed when we elected a liberal president who has ties to the middle east and promised to close Gitmo and get us out of every where. Yet he still pulled the trigger on the operation. We have one of the best trained armed forces in the world with solders that are second to none! Still want to mess with the USA? Think long and hard. As far as releasing pictures of the dead bastard, who needs them. AlQueda confirmed he is dead. We don't need hundreds of protesters waving the photos. Strange thing, if you notice there haven't been the massive protests that we have seen in the past? No body, no photos, no grave= no wind in the sails.

Rember the conversations last week of when to close a roadway? Think this qualifies.

I know this wont help in your wife’s case, but a summons should either be returned in person or sent by UPS, FEDEX or Certified Mail (Use certified mail only if the court uses a PO Box.) .This provides proof that you sent a document and that it was received and the dates for both. mark the summons number in the notes box. You can track the package on line for UPS or FEDEX. The Post Office returns a card in the mail with the date and who received the envelope. If you dont have notification that the envelope was received, you have a place to start and can call the court clerk. Good luck on her pending citizenship!

Justice would have been to let those who died keep the tools and guns that they died with. Now they would have a reason to use them. But I doubt that they will ever see that bastard as they are in two different places. God bless the innocents who were killed on 9-11 and the solders who took up their cause.

And I hope the bullet was loaded with bacon grease.

Funny thing Ther are a lot of school busses driving around with white strobe lights flashing. The red flashing lights are justified under the VTL. Were does the authority for the white strobes come from?

Hey, If your Governor has his way, that may be the new Metro NJ Department of Public Safety.

This started off as a thread on company elections and as you stretched it, I feel I must reply. II find it hard to believe that any dept. would consider 2 years as enough time/experience as a firefighter to be able to supervise and instruct other firefighters. In many cases they have just completed probation. How many actual fires and emergencies could an individual go on to "learn the trade" in 2 years? That depends on the Department: You are fortunate that you are employed by a department that has the manpower and workload to keep your skills up. However, there are some departments were personnel may not respond to a fire in years, just by amount of fires or the way the chart works out. Also unless a probie is employed by one of the larger departments there is a chance that a volunteer may have more hands training or actual fire experience. I am not trying to make this a career/vol. issue, but how can the career side accept volunteers as "the same" when we require our new firefighters to have 2x the training level as your Lt., just to graduate the fire academy and respond to calls as a probie under the direct supervision of an officer. I really don’t care if you ever accept me as “the same” Its not why I joined. I have no illusions that I can walk into a FDNY house in the South Bronx and compare war stories. I assume that the training you received is longer and therefore better. But what do you do with it once you complete it. You seem to assume that every career FF is as well trained and is able to maintain their skills at your level. I assume that many can but by the nature of the some of the departments in the area, some can’t. There are other departments were the probie is somewhat under the direction of an officer, but the officer may be operating another rig. If you do not have enough personnel that can meet the standard that you have set (which I have already commented on as being very substandard as well as dangerious to the public, the members and themselves) then its time to reconsider how you deliever fire protection. Funny thing, There does not seem to be a department in the EMT Bravo universe that has enough qualified personnel to maintain adequate staffing according to the forums. Does that mean that every department is substandard and dangerous and should reconsider how we deliver fire protection? The answer is of course not. We do the best we can with what we have and strive to do better. And as you don’t know what department I am talking about nor the average response, I don’t see how you can make such a general statement. If there are not enough trained personnel, you need to recruit more, hire more, train more or consolidate with another dept. so that you can meet the most basic of standards for providing protection to the community. You seem to have mis read the comment. I never stated that we did not have enough trained or qualified personnel. It was intended to show that not all volunteer departments have a beauty contest for officer elections. Some have defined standards. I can’t speak for all but some would rather not fill a vacancy with an unqualified FF than “fill a slot” with anybody because we have X slots to fill. Please don’t construe this to be a putdown of anyone or organization. It seems that sometimes when a general question comes up it meanders to a career vrs volunteer argument. The fact of the matter is that both have to learn to live together and fight the common enemy-FIRE. And remember this: When the you know what hits the fan we all seem to put our differences aside work shoulder to shoulder and help our neighbors.

In my department in order for a FF to "run" for office, said FF must meet certain requirements. 1) Time in grade (For Lt. 2 years of membership in good standing as a Class 1 FF.). 2) Currently a Class 1 FF. 3) Education requirements. The education requirements increase as you go up the ladder. The courses are prescribed and not chosen by the candidate. They are the State offered courses. In order to run for Deputy Chief, a candidate needs 10 years active service as a class 1 FF and about 20 classes. Chief of Department requires being a former Deputy Chief and more Educational requirements. The next question is what if you don’t have a qualified candidate for a position? We haven’t had that occur for one of the chiefs yet, but we had vacant line officers positions due to lack of qualified applicants.

Reminds me of another tragedy, 9-11

I agree 100% Several years ago a police officer in my department was checking the rear of house on an activated alarm call. There were several inches of snow on the ground at the time. The back yard looked like a flat field due to the snow. What the officer did not know is that there was an in ground pool very close to the rear door of the house. After checking the rear door he moved back to look at the windows on the second floor. He then stepped through the pool cover and fell a few feet to the concrete bottom of the pool. There was either no or minimal water in that end of the pool. The pool cover was old and covered with snow and no other references to a pool could be seen. Due to his injuries, the officer could not return to duty. It just goes to show, if you can’t tell what you are walking on, you should not be walking on it!

This is not a case of a vehicle going over the limit. The operator’s actions were so dangerous that he was charged with multiple violations including misdemeanor reckless driving by two police agencies. This was according to the news reports. He operator may be permitted to plead to a few charges in satisfaction to the rest but I seriously doubt that it will go away. When I was a rookie, my FTO gave me some advice about emergency operation of a vehicle. Be careful, if you get into an accident wile responding or cause another accident, you can’t help the person you are going to aid. Even worse, if you get hurt who is going to rescue the rescuer?

I don't find this comment funny. You have opened up a can of worms and I expect you to apologize to every police officer. This type of "Humor" is unacceptable. If you have a God complex because you have a set of turnout gear and face smoke and flames then keep it to yourself. I have spent 20 years on "the streets" in a city police department. During that time I have been shot at, had to face near riots and been injured several times dealing with violent and drunk people. I have had to search for bombs and people with guns.. Funny, I can't ever recall the room entry I had to make being determined too dangerous and we will just wait for the guy to come out. When was the last time you had to tell people that their friends (or worse their child) had died? Still think you are a hero champ, I never did I did my job and waited for the next call. It is not my intention to demean the fire service, blow my own horn, or to say one department is braver or better than the other, we all have our jobs to do and we all take risks every time we answer the call, but I am replying to one particular comment. We should take pride in our functions whatever we do and not demean the other services.

The new cars were designed for the New Haven line. The other lines as well as the LIRR have already received new cars. What makes the M8s different is they have third rail and panagraph electrical systems. The cars designed for the Hudson and Harlem lines can not run on the New Haven line between Mt Vernon and New Haven as they switch over to overhead wires in Pelham.