FDNY Firefighter Sues Colleagues over Leaks

May 15 -- A firefighter is going after fellow smoke-eaters who he says slimed him with media leaks painting him as unfit for the job, the Daily News has learned.

Michael Johnson — an African-American "priority hire" who joined FDNY ranks in the wake of a fiery legal battle to diversify the department — is targeting fellow firefighters who teed up tabloid stories saying he ran away from his job when things got too hot.

The Brooklyn federal lawsuit said FDNY Deputy Chief Paul Mannix and others in Mannix's now-defunct Merit Matters organization fed photos and personal information of Johnson to friendly media outlets.

The culmination was a May 2015 article in a city newspaper with a picture of Johnson outside a burning building. According to his detractors, Johnson was outside because he was too scared to fight the blaze.

Johnson's lawsuit said he was inside the burning Brooklyn building when he saw his air gauge perilously near empty and left for a refill. But the damage was done with the anonymously sourced hit job, he said in the suit.

Mannix and others fed photos and personal information "to destroy Johnson's career with the FDNY, and portray all priority hires like Johnson as incompetent and cowardly in the company of 'New York's Bravest,'" the suit says.

Johnson's federal case against Mannix grew out of a 2016 civil rights suit he filed against the city and the FDNY.

That case claims Johnson endured unfair performance evaluations and humiliating firehouse drills at Brooklyn's Engine Co. 257, such as being forced to practice putting on his pants at the start of every tour.

Meanwhile, the city "failed to meaningfully address a longstanding pattern of open and hostile opposition to priority hires" and court orders, the civil suit charges.

Telephone records recently dredged up as part of Johnson's 2016 case suggest Mannix was one of the sources providing Johnson's "personal and confidential information," according to the lawsuit filed Saturday.

The FDNY in recent years had combated a spate of leaks from within its ranks that resulted in negative news stories about the department's diversity hiring.

Personnel and medical details of specific firefighter candidates, most of them women and black and Latino applicants trying to join the FDNY, were revealed — in some cases a violation of medical privacy laws.

In 2015, the FDNY docked deputy chief Mannix 50 days of pay for his role in the widespread leaking scandal. Mannix also shuttered his Merit Matters group.

Court papers show in 2016, Mannix agreed to personally pay $45,000 to a black firefighter who said Mannix and another top member of FDNY brass leaked his drug test results. The other FDNY member, retired battalion chief Rory Houton, had to shell out $10,000.

Despite his troubled past, Mannix was elected in a 2016 landslide vote to the executive board of the Uniformed Fire Officers Association, the union that represents officer ranks in the FDNY.

Johnson, 42, is still a firefighter, according to the suit filed Saturday. His lawyer declined to comment to The News.

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