A local FDNY station and its firefighters have for years used a Two Bridges tenement building Noel Young manages for his dad, the owner, for training. The old building has a unique layout that makes it ideal for training purposes, and Young told Hell Gate he's never had any issues with working with the FDNY.
Until November 30, when two firefighters, Young said, broke the building's front door, and he was given the runaround by officials, who initially denied such a thing had happened and then refused to take responsibility.
On the morning of November 30, according to an account Young posted in the /r/newyorkcity subreddit, firefighters were let in by one of the building's tenants. They conducted their training and left, Young wrote, closing the front door, which locked the door behind them. Then at 11:09 a.m., he wrote, two firefighters somewhat perplexingly came back and began "casually prying the door," leaving it bent and disfigured and unable to lock. Before they began trying to open the door, one of the two had "look[ed back over his shoulder before beginning as if to check if the coast is clear," Young wrote.
How did he know this? Young caught the whole thing on his security camera.
Young then tried to get answers from the Fire Department about what the hell happened. At first, he said, one Lieutenant Morgan at the local FDNY station denied firefighters were even responsible for how fucked up Young's door was, and tried to claim the door must have been broken before they got there.
But when confronted with a still photo from the security camera footage, Young said that the lieutenant admitted it was possible that the firefighters pried the door open, but not definitively proven. Morgan, according to Young, called the incident "unfortunate," but still refused to take responsibility and told him to take it up with the comptroller.
Young then reported the incident to the FDNY's confidential tips line.
"I tried calling it. The response was a lot better. I spoke to an investigator. He told me he would write it up," he told Hell Gate. According to Young, while the investigator told him that while it "shouldn't have happened," they also said that in "certain situations" the FDNY has the right to enter a building with force, even if it's not an emergency.
But what are those certain situations? And how exactly did the situation at Young's apartment, where a training had seemingly already concluded, and where the firefighters in question seemed to check that the coast was clear before gleefully fucking Young's door up, fit into those exceptions? Young told Hell Gate neither the investigator nor the lieutenant could tell him, but it seems like something they should be able to articulate!
The equivocation is what's really sticking in Young's craw, he told Hell Gate. "Stuff happens all the time, but in the end, it's all about your response," Young said. As for his dad, who actually owns the building, Young says he was furious. "He was very upset," Young said. "'How could the government get away with this,' was what he said."
We reached out to the FDNY about the incident at Young's building, and they responded that the incident is under investigation.
Updated (12/8/23, 2:20 p.m.) This story has been updated with FDNY's response to our request for comment.
—Adlan Jackson
And some totally above-board links:
- Mayor Eric Adams was in D.C. on Thursday, talking to White House officials (but not Biden), pleading for more assistance, and hoping to do something about the (self-inflicted) perception voters have that asylum seekers are ruining the city, and that it's his fault.
- Stereogum interviewed Bronx rapper Scar Lip.
- New York City's DSA chapter has announced their slate of endorsements for next year's state legislature races.
- Less than a fifth of funds raised at Santacon for "charity" have gone to registered non-profits, and have instead gone to things like crypto and Burning Man.
- High-profile jeweler "Benny da Jeweler" was robbed at gunpoint.
- A woman in Queens was killed by a teenage tenant in an apparent rent dispute.
- A 28-year-old man has been interrogated relating to gunfire at an Albany synagogue. The man was taken into custody by police.
- Musicians have launched an incredibly cool-sounding synthesizer library in Brooklyn.
- If you can't get enough Flaco content, some birders have been tracking the escaped owl's journey around the city.
- After being summoned to Governor Kathy Hochul's office to answer for his crimes, the governor endorsed Democratic Tom Suozzi for George Santos's vacant House seat.
- Speaking of the House, the body voted along party lines to censure Rep. Jamaal Bowman for pulling a fire alarm during a battle over a government shutdown in September.
- A 19-year-old from New Jersey was shot and wounded by the NYPD, who say the teen waved a gun at them and left a note professing his desire to die in his car.
- An NYPD captain has been charged with kidnapping and assault on a New Jersey woman he was allegedly having an affair with. The captain, Hariton Marachilian, who commanded a Brooklyn precinct, has a history of allegations of sexual misconduct.
- A former cop has plead guilty to helping her lover, a Bronx gang leader, flee the country.
- At a rally on the first night of Hanukkah, demonstrators mourned deaths in Israel and Palestine.
- The new East River esplanade looks sweet and will apparently be opening soon:
