Firefighters

I spend a good number of posts in pointing out police malfeasance. Now I am going to take some firefighters to task. Those who read this blog know that I was a firefighter for more than 2 decades, and I have a drawer full of certifications that back this up. I want you to look at this video, then I will give you my 2 cents’ worth.

Haters in the comments are just jealous that they don’t get to deliver justice like this to the bad guys.

— Anthony (@Catholicizm1) September 22, 2026

Firefighters are permitted to break and move things, as well as forcibly damage property in order to deal with exigent circumstances. The emergency does not give them unlimited authority, but firefighters are not generally permitted to do more than is reasonably necessary for the exigency. Courts assess the need and the response in light of what responders reasonably knew at the time. The controlling court case here is Bowditch v. Boston, 101 U.S. 16 (1879).

The exact authority, compensation rules, and potential liability also depend on the state and local law governing the fire department. Bowditch, for example, addressed a Massachusetts statutory compensation scheme, while the Fifth Circuit’s Baker v. City of McKinney limited its ruling against compensation to damage objectively necessary to prevent imminent harm during an active emergency.

So the question becomes: Was that path for the hose objectively necessary to gain access to the water supply? I would argue that there was a better path for that hose, and taking that alternate path to gain access to the water supply would have taken less time than breaking the windows on the car. Here is a picture of Engine 82 (the same exact fire truck). If you look at the area within the red circle, you will see that there is pump intake in the middle of the fire truck, and the yellow circle is the front bumper intake of the fire truck.

Looking at the video, the firefighters spent 41 seconds breaking out the windows on the car, and another full minute passing the hose through the car from the hydrant to the front intake. So, it was nearly two minutes to connect the hose by going through the car.

Now take a look from the video of the firefighters breaking the window:

Which method do you think would be faster? The question then turns, according to the court cases involved, was it necessary for the firefighters to break this car’s windows?

Note the New York firefighter who posted this admits they weren’t doing it to gain access to the hydrant, they did what they did to “deliver justice like this to the bad guys,” and also calling this an “act of justice.”

Delivering justice as some sort of ad hoc parking enforcement court is not the firefighters’ job. Go ahead, Google “FDNY engine 82 break car windows” and see just how many times FDNY is “delivering justice” by doing thousands of dollars in damage to car owners whose only transgression is illegal parking.

This is wrong. Had I done this in my department, I would have been fired, and rightfully so.