NEW YORK — FDNY firefighters are fighting the department’s snooping into their personal phone records to find the source of news leaks.
New York Post reported that the Uniformed Fire Officers Association strongly recommended that members not give the department their numbers and delete them from their personnel files.
The department has recently been searching phone records to check if members called New York Post reporters. The Post broke a story last week about FDNY issuing subpoenas for the phone records of battalion chief to see if he leaked two stories.
One story was about a female FDNY probationary firefighter who was allowed to graduate from the academy without passing a required running test. The second was about a firefighter who failed a drug test and was barred from driving department vehicles.
“The FDNY is so paranoid about leaks to the media, they’re scanning phone records and have a dedicated operation to flush them out,” a retired member said. “They’re more concerned about bad press than their bad policy.”