Mayor’s F.I.R.E. Mess Getting Ugly

Leaders of the city’s black firefighters association said today that Mayor Francis Slay’s removal of Fire Chief Sherman George has created an “energized atmosphere of defiance and intolerance” among some white firefighters, and it is in that atmosphere that a toy monkey was left hanging from a makeshift noose at a northside fire house over the weekend.

The F.B.I. has been notified of this possible hate crime, but Abram Pruitt and Wayne Luster, co-chairs of F.I.R.E., said no one from the Mayor’s office nor Public Safety Director Charles Bryson had bothered contacting F.I.R.E. regarding this incident, despite the organization representing 98% of African-American members of the department.

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