The Bloomberg administration is intentionally omitting key information from Fire Department data while boasting "record low" response times - even as firetrucks take up to two extra minutes to reach blazes, according to recent explosive testimony.
The revelation came from none other than the FDNY's top communications official during a labor-dispute hearing.
"We don't record the time from when the police [911] call taker makes contact with the caller until it gets to the fire[-dispatch system]," Fire Department communications chief Robert Boyce said in sworn testimony Jan. 19.
Under the old system, 911 police dispatchers took initial fire calls and then quickly, typically within four seconds, passed them to fire dispatchers, sources said. The fire dispatchers then did a lengthier interview with the caller, up to two minutes, before sending out a truck, the sources said.
The length of the initial 911 call had not been included in response times, but the longer fire-dispatch call was.
Then, in 2008, the system changed. Police dispatchers began handling the entire interview process - and the time it takes hasn't been included in department response data since.
Given the change, "there's no way for the city to determine whether or not the city of New York is responding to fires faster than they were," Joshua Zuckerberg, a lawyer for the fire officers' union, told Boyce, according to transcripts from an arbitration dispute between the union and the Fire Department.
Boyce acknowledged, "I think that's fair to say."
Brian Kuntz, president of the fire dispatchers' union, told The Post that "the numbers are definitely skewed because they're deleting the whole interrogation and they're saying, 'We're doing it better.'
"If you included those interrogations in the calls, they'd be a minute, at least, more than they're telling you."
FDNY spokesman Frank Gribbon, when asked about the issue, insisted, "It's clear from the results from the last two years that our response times are the fastest ever . . . Fire deaths are at the lowest on record."
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