Officer Joseph Locurto, 35, who had been a cop in Queens for four years, said he hadn't even known the float in Broad Channel's 1998 Labor Day parade would involve racial overtones until 15 minutes before the parade began.
Wearing blackface, one of the firefighters, Jonathan Walters, was pulled from the back of the float in a parody of the death of James Byrd Jr., a black man murdered by three white men in Texas who dragged him to his death from the back of a truck.
Locurto said he was told to paint his face black just before the parade and took part only because he wanted to "make people laugh and win a trophy" for the most humorous float.
At a barbecue the previous evening, he said it was decided that float would be called Gotti-zilla and focus on Italian-Americans.
Locurto, Walters and firefighter Robert Steiner are suing the city for reinstatement, saying former Mayor Rudy Giuliani violated their constitutional rights to free speech by firing them.
Within days of the parade, Giuliani said Locurto would never work as a New York cop again unless the "Supreme Court of the United States tells us to put them back on."
Federal Judge John Sprizzo said it was "unfortunate" the mayor used "rather strong" language before the men faced internal hearings.
"Unfortunately some of [Giuliani's] statements were rather strong," Sprizzo said. "He didn't say they're suspended; he said they're gone."
City lawyer Jonathan Pines, however, said the decision to fire the men was made only after an administrative hearing.
Locurto's lawyer, Chris Dunn, charged Giuliani made a "political" decision to sack the men before any investigation in a bid to quell a controversy sparked days earlier by the NYPD's abrupt decision to shut down the Million Youth March in Harlem.
Sprizzo, who is hearing the case without a jury, told Pines it was "not a very strong argument" to suggest the city sacked the men for parodying black Americans.
