NYPost
NEW YORK — Calling the city’s action “shocking to anyone’s sense of fairness,” a Brooklyn judge has ordered the FDNY to pay an $82,500-a-year disability pension to a firefighter sacked three years ago for using cocaine.
Ex-Fire Commissioner Sal Cassano fired Alphonso Sicignano in 2011 as part of the department’s zero-tolerance policy, rejecting his claim that emotional scars from digging at Ground Zero led to drug and alcohol abuse.
But state Supreme Court Judge Arthur Schack said Cassano went too far, considering an administrative hearing officer accepted the firefighter’s explanation and deemed the punishment too harsh. “Given these facts, the termination of petitioner Sicignano for his use of cocaine is shocking to anyone’s sense of fairness,” Schack said in a ruling three months ago posted recently on the city’s Web site.
Full story: Firefighter fired for cocaine should collect $82K pension: judge