By Daniel Chacon
The Gazette
COLORADO SPRINGS, Colo. — A YouTube video portraying Colorado Springs Fire Chief Rich Brown as Nazi dictator Adolf Hitler led top brass to try to find out whether it was created by an on-duty firefighter.
The video, which has received more than 1,300 hits since it was posted June 4, appears to have been created by someone with inside knowledge of the fire department.
“People have the right to say what they want to say if they’re off-duty. We’re not going to infringe on anybody’s First Amendment rights,” Tommy Smith, the department’s deputy chief of support services, said Monday.
“But as employees of the city on city time, we don’t condone that kind of behavior,” he said. “If we were to find out who did that and it was done on-duty, we would hold them accountable.”
The title of the video is “Hitler Rants About Fire Department Priorities.” The four-minute video includes profanity-laced subtitles. The video clip is available to anyone on YouTube and can be tailored with unique subtitles.
The video was uploaded by “Bob Loblaw,” according to YouTube. The fire department doesn’t have an employee by that name. But the comedy TV show “Arrested Development” has a character by that name.
After an employee made Smith aware of the video, fire officials asked the city’s Information Technology Department to investigate its origins.
The investigation proved fruitless.
“There is no definitive way that IT can look to make a determination whether or not that was created on-duty,” Smith said.
Smith said he was “very disappointed” in the video.
“Any time you have someone in a leadership position that’s making tough decisions about the future of the department, people are going to take shots at it,” he said.
Smith said the department is developing new programs and “being an innovative, creative” organization in front of changes happening in the fire service.
“For someone to characterize our efforts as such is absolutely disappointing,” he said.
But Smith said the department isn’t going to dwell on the video.
“We believe the vast majority of our employees, if not all of our employees, are on board with the initiatives that Chief Brown has come forward with, and we’re moving full steam ahead,” he said. “This won’t slow us down at all because we’ve got a job to do. We can’t let those types of games distract us from the mission of our organization.”
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