Ex-FDNY Firefighter: Bullying Gave Me PTSD

June 7, 2018
Former firefighter Daniel Rivera claims in a lawsuit that bullying and harassment ended his FDNY career and led him to develop PTSD.

June 07 -- For one Hispanic ex-firefighter, the FDNY’s heroic reputation has gone up in flames.

Daniel Rivera says he was forced out of the Fire Department by his fellow Bravest — who allegedly used a childhood trauma to cruelly torment the smoke-eater over his tangential link to a years-old discrimination suit.

Now Rivera, formerly of Ladder 35 on the Upper West Side, is filing a discrimination lawsuit of his own.

The defendants include the FDNY and Fire Commissioner Daniel Nigro, along with two lieutenants who allegedly failed to enforce department protocols and a firefighter who led the hate campaign against him, Rivera said.

“I lost something very personal and valuable to me — my career,” said Rivera.

His FDNY buddies-turned-bullies ostracized him at work, left him alone at fires and dredged up old terrors by sadistically filling his gear and locker with roaches, some plastic and some real, he says in the suit.

As a 4-year-old, Rivera was locked inside a dark basement closet where he fell asleep — and awoke covered in roaches.

He was then was doused so heavily in Raid that he suffered chemical burns requiring hospitalization. Decades later, the mere sight of a roach touched off a panic attack, he said.

“There needs to be some real accountability in the FDNY — all the way to the top — about the need for reform,” said the former firefighter, whose papers will be filed Thursday in Brooklyn Federal Court.

Rivera says his two lieutenants didn’t take steps to stop his alleged mistreatment — and when he brought complaints to their superiors and FDNY investigators, it sparked instant retaliation in the firehouse.

“It got so bad, I slept in the gym at the firehouse, I didn’t want to bunk with them out of fear. I’d barricade the door with weights,” he told the Daily News.

For more than 10 years, Rivera says, he enjoyed a stellar FDNY experience, earning rave reviews from supervisors and — he thought — the respect and friendship of his Ladder 35 crew.

But his career ended abruptly this winter, when Rivera resigned with a diagnosis of posttraumatic stress disorder, allegedly brought on by his own co-workers’ ruthless and relentless persecution.

According to Rivera, his troubles began around 2014, when two so-called “priority hires” arrived at his firehouse, which goes by the nickname of “The Cavemen.”

The probie firefighters — one black and one Hispanic — landed their jobs through a discrimination suit filed by the Vulcan Society, the association of black FDNY firefighters.

The Vulcan Society case had forced the city to overhaul its outdated and ineffectual Civil Service entrance exams — and earned black and Hispanic candidates whose hiring was delayed or derailed a second chance at joining the FDNY.

It also created intense feelings in the Fire Department — which at that time was roughly 93% white and nearly 100% male.

Rivera, who joined the FDNY in 2002, was not a Vulcan Society member. Nor was he part of the original discrimination case.

But in 2012, as the suit closed, the Justice Department let him know that he was entitled to some remedy as a Hispanic firefighter.

“I had scored high on the entrance exam when I took it and got hired right away,” he said. “So the payout was really small, like $400. But I decided to take it; I believed in the case.”

As the controversy around the Vulcan Society suit roared through FDNY firehouses, Rivera says, he didn’t tell anyone about his small windfall.

“It was a toxic topic,” Rivera said. “A lot of animosity and blowback. I just kept my mouth shut.”

But when the two probie firefighters showed up at Ladder 35 and Rivera witnessed the “dehumanizing” treatment heaped on the new hires, he felt he had to speak up.

“I shared with a few people that I’d been a claimant, I was a senior firefighter by then, and I thought I had people’s respect,” he said.

But as it turned out, Rivera says now, he was dead wrong.

According to him, once his secret was out, plastic cockroaches began popping in his locker, his car and his bunker gear. When he found the first one — on his deodorant — Rivera suffered a full-blown panic attack at work, he says.

Sometimes, as in the case of a roach taped to his locker door, the bugs were real.

Though his childhood roach trauma was well-known in the firehouse, it wasn’t until Rivera’s ties to the Vulcan Society lawsuit emerged that he was targeted by his colleagues, he says.

Despite his distress and demands that the torture stop, cockroaches kept appearing, he says. When he touched the live one on his locker, Rivera finally complained to his lieutenant.

Rivera says that when the officer tried to enter the locker room to investigate, the other firefighters pushed the officer out and said, “We’ll handle this.”

Then they surrounded Rivera and shoved him into a corner — jabbing their fingers at him, shouting obscenities and calling him a “rat,” he alleges.

Rivera said he later reported the whole incident to the most senior firefighter in the house, who sent out a companywide voice mail ordering the others to stop the harassment.

Not a single officer came to talk to Rivera about the altercation, he says.

No attempt was made to discipline the other firefighters, according to Rivera.

Soon, he says, he was “excommunicated” from the firehouse. He endured the silent treatment everywhere he went — even at fires.

Rivera charged his colleagues even left him alone in a blaze more than once, a dangerous breach of FDNY protocol.

The abuse continued, according to allegations in Rivera’s suit, with firefighters defacing bulletin board pictures of him by drawing whiskers and a rat face on them.

They refused to swap shifts with him, a common FDNY practice, and didn’t acknowledge the death of his 106-year-old grandmother, a major figure in his life.

His name was also removed from the daily shift assignments, he said. When he actually carved it into a wooden board, it was whittled out. When he wrote it in marker, it was blacked out, he says.

At the same time Rivera was allegedly suffering at Ladder 35, so was another firefighter — who filed his own discrimination lawsuit against the FDNY last year.

Rookie Firefighter Gordon Springs has claimed he was sexually assaulted in May 2015 by a more senior smoke-eater, who allegedly forced the probie to get on a workout bench at the firehouse gym and then placed his genitals on Springs’ forehead.

A few months later, in August, Springs was also “bucketed” at Ladder 35, according to court documents.

The probie was ordered to climb a 20-foot pole, only to have dirty mop water dumped on his head. Unable to keep his grip, Springs fell.

Rivera said he wasn’t present for either of the alleged incidents with Springs. By then, he had sought counseling to deal with his mounting anxiety, depression and insomnia, he says.

His union rep told Rivera he was hated and would have to transfer, but Rivera knew that wasn’t a solution.

“I know how it works, because I’ve seen it in action. The firefighters will call around to any house you go to,” he said. “They’ll call up and say, ‘Let me tell you about the POS (piece of s--t) you’re about to get.’ Once you are labeled in the FDNY, it’s for life.”

As the situation deteriorated, Rivera says, he had several ugly confrontations with other firefighters — with one calling him a “spic.” He said he was still left alone at fires — against all FDNY training.

But even when he reported it up the chain of command, the complaints went nowhere, he said.

The FDNY did take one step to discipline the firefighter who Rivera said was the main instigator against him, Rivera says.

In December 2015, the department moved the firefighter to Engine 23, the firehouse closest to Ladder 35 and still in the same battalion, meaning both companies responded to the same calls, Rivera says.

After another shouting match in April 2016 — when a much younger firefighter allegedly yelled to him that “You’re a nobody,” and lunged at him — Rivera went out on medical leave, he says. In a May 2017 letter to Commissioner Nigro, FDNY chief medical officer Kerry Kelly outlined Rivera’s workplace issues and confirmed the PTSD diagnosis.

Rivera, who retired for good this past Jan. 10, says he did not want to give up his job.

But knowing the culture of the FDNY, he says, he could see no other way out.

“Some people came to me privately and expressed empathy for what I was going through, but nobody would challenge the pack or stop the hazing behavior. Nothing changed, things just got worse,” he said.

The FDNY’s Equal Employment Opportunity office did open an investigation into Ladder 35 and found some of the claims credible, prompting a probe from its Bureau of Investigations and Trials and some disciplinary measures.

“The department has a strict anti-hazing/anti-bullying policy and investigated these allegations once a formal complaint was made,” said spokesman Frank Gribbon.

Rebekah Cook-Mack, an attorney with Levy Ratner who is handling Rivera’s case, said he’s seeking lost wages and compensatory damages for emotional distress from the city.

“Rivera was a successful firefighter serving our city with pride, until his promising career was destroyed by people who resent the racial integration of the FDNY. This lawsuit is about getting justice for him and changing the culture that permits this type of harassment to occur in the first place,” she said.

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