Honor amid the ashes
Mike Carney is a contractor from Winthrop, and not long ago he took a crew to a building in the South End to fix a leak in the basement.
The leak was in a 4-inch pipe for the sprinkler system, so the owners had called the Fire Department. The firefighters weren't authorized to do more than advise the owners to hire contractors to fix the problem, and that's when Carney's crew showed up.
"When we got there, we found out one of the firefighters had plugged the leaking main and slowed down the water loss," Carney was saying. "Then he came back, when he was on his way home from work, and put a temporary mechanical clamp on the pipe to keep it from rupturing. That was before we even got there.
"Now, what's the big deal? It's his job, right? But that's the point. It wasn't his job. I don't think the average person understands that if that 4-inch water main failed, those condo units would have been under water in minutes. It could have flooded every brownstone on West Newton Street. That firefighter didn't have to do what he did. He did it because it was the right thing to do."
In the year that has passed since two Boston firefighters, Warren Payne and Paul Cahill, were killed fighting a fire at the Tai Ho Chinese restaurant in West Roxbury, we have usually only heard about firefighters doing the wrong thing. If that firefighter, whose name Mike Carney never got, had been caught smoking a joint, off-duty, in total anonymity, instead of saving people's homes, off-duty, in total anonymity, he'd be doing the perp walk on the news tonight.
A lot of what's wrong with the Fire Department has to do with bad systems, and bad people taking advantage of them. But given the complexity of the Byzantine arrangements, blurring all sorts of lines of responsibility, accountability, and propriety, it's easier to ascribe the personal failings of the few to the many. If this were done to a racial or ethnic group, we'd rightfully call it stereotyping or racism. But we can do it to firefighters because, well, aren't they all just a bunch of hacks looking for some place to take a dive so they can file a phony disability?
Most firefighters I know, like most cops I know, didn't take the job so they could rip off you, me, or anybody else. Most of them, the vast majority of them, are a pretty idealistic bunch. A lot of them served this country before they served this city. A lot of them like the idea of taking home a paycheck for working in a business that helps people, that maybe saves a life or some property.
And most of them are like that firefighter who, without fanfare, saved a block on West Newton Street from going under water: They take their role as public servants seriously.
That doesn't excuse the behavior of the thieves and the criminals, from the preening Firefighter Speedo to the deputy chief accused of being a serial rapist. Neither does it minimize the importance and legitimacy of the good journalism that has brought the abuses of the public trust and the public purse to public light.
But let's keep some perspective here: There are 1,555 firefighters in this city. How many do you think are corrupt?
And while it has been convenient to criticize the firefighter union's insistence that the acceptance of random drug testing be part of collective bargaining, it is seldom mentioned that the Menino administration was told in 2000, by a commission appointed by the mayor, to create a drug testing policy and that the mayor and his people dropped the ball.
Blaming most firefighters for the state of the department is like blaming American soldiers for the mess in Iraq.
It was wrong to hoist every firefighter onto a pedestal after 9/11. That doesn't make it right to knock them all off be cause of the bums in their midst.
Kevin Cullen is a Globe columnist. He can be reached at cullen@globe.com 