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Rudy and the 9/11 hearings etc....
Mixed about this stuff. As much as I respect the NYPD leadership the last few years, I know that emergency (immediate) disaster response in this country is largely a bad joke. Key to understanding what I'm saying is the word "disaster" as compared to the hundreds of thousands of ordinary emergencies in this country every day.
Anyway, rivalry between a big-city Police and Fire department is not unusual. The fact that NYC as of late has still not sorted out who would really be in charge the next time (or the fact that almost nobody in this country is qualified to be in charge of both firemen and law enforement simultaneously), is not exactly a setup for glowing reviews of yesterday's witnesses. A few of these arrogant motherfuckers deserve Lehman's criticism which (to me) is really directed at their petty BS rivalries.
This stuff came before Rudy, existed under Rudy and (way more shamefully) still exists today.
I have a close friend who is one step below the top-level of emergency response in one of America's largest cities (guess which one, e.g., Coltrane!). He's in an upper-level position at an agency that would coordinate first-line responses in a disaster. Not so long ago I asked him if his agency had ever done coordinated simulations on the Police and Fire plans in the event of a disaster on the scale of 9/11. His response? These plans (which would, by their very nature be voluminous and require intense familiarity at command levels) are on a need-to-know basis. Outside the FD, nobody needs to know. Outside the PD, nobody needs to know. Inside the FD and the PD, nobody really knows who knows, so nobody knows who to call, or who is in charge, when the big one hits.
Does the media in your city ever ask about the response plans for the next 9/11? If not, now would be a great moment to start the inquiries. Because I guarantee you, 95% of the 100 largest cities in this country, do not have a plan, and couldn't coordinate between two agencies if 3000 lives depended on it.
So today I say, kudos to former Secretary of the Navy Lehman. It takes quite a bit of nerve to call a spade a spade in the context the NYPD and the NYFD, but its the only way these important issues will ever be addressed in the cities who need to prepare for the next one.
And fuck Von Essen's horse too.
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Man, back in the day, you used to love getting flushed, you'd be all like 'Flush me J! Flush me!' And I'd be like 'Nawww'
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