'Hero' FDNY firefighter sidelined by racist bosses: suit
An off-duty firefighter lauded as a hero by a Queens family that narrowly escaped their burning home claims in a lawsuit that bigot FDNY bosses relegated him to driving delivery vans instead of fighting fires.
Roben Duge, 32, was walking home from the subway in March when he spotted flames in his next-door neighbor’s house and rushed over. The father of two rescued children claimed that “he ran into the house and he just pulled the kids and [the grandmother] and pulled them out,” reports said at the time. “I live to see another day,” grandmother Linda Mitchell was quoted as saying.
A firefighter since 2013, Duge wanted to gain experience by working at a busier firehouse, so he transferred to Ladder 103 in East New York, Brooklyn. But once there, his boss kept him firmly on the sidelines, he claims. “You should go to the neighborhood you live in,” Capt. Daniel Florenco told Duge, according to court papers. Florenco even called the officers of Duge’s previous company to grill them on why “they had allowed the transfer;” denied Duge and another black firefighter a “front piece” — the metal plate on the front of a firefighter’s helmet which identifies their firehouse ...
Florenco allegedly tried to force Duge to transfer out of Ladder 103. When Duge refused, a senior firefighter, who is white, told him, “If this were back in the day, you would have been punched in the face for refusing to transfer out,” according to the lawsuit. Duge was “reassigned to administrative duties driving a messenger van because he complained of how he was treated,” he said in court papers.
He’s been driving the van for a year, his lawyer, Aymen Aboushi, said.
https://nypost.com/2018/07/28/hero-fdny-firefighter-sidelined-by-racist-bosses-suit/