Milwaukee firefighter who hung brown figurine inside station suspended
A white Milwaukee firefighter who hung a small brown figurine by the neck inside a fire station has been suspended without pay for 20 days.
The firefighter who hung the doll showed a “gross lack of judgment,” Fire Chief Mark Rohlfing told city council members Tuesday, the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel reports.
But an investigation into the February incident, which wasn’t made public until late June, found the firefighter didn’t have a “deliberate or intentional racist or sexist intent” when he brought the figurine into the firehouse after finding it in the street, Rohlfing said. The department’s investigation found it was an anti-abortion prop handed out at rallies.
The firefighter hung the prop in the kitchen of a downtown fire station using a pink ribbon after returning from a medical call, the chief said.
“He said that he tied the ribbons … together and hung it, hoping somebody would say, ‘Oh, I know what that is,’” Rohlfing said Tuesday.
The doll then either hung from a hook on a whiteboard in the kitchen or on a table for up to four days before the station’s lone black female firefighter alerted administrators. She was later transferred to another station at her request, the newspaper reports.
About a dozen firefighters were also disciplined, including several battalion leaders, for allowing the figurine to be displayed that long, Wisconsin Public Radio reports.
Rohlfing said he decided against firing the firefighter due to his past work history, his behavior with other colleagues and 10 years of military service, the outlet reports.
Some city council members, meanwhile, said they felt the punishment wasn’t severe enough.
Alderwoman Milele Coggs said she found it “unbelievable” that the white firefighter was unaware that his actions could have offended his colleagues, citing the “deep-rooted” history of blacks being lynched in the US, the Journal Sentinel reports.
“It is not a secret what hanging African Americans from ropes, nooses or anything of that nature, and the impacts that the visualization of anything that looks similar to that could have on particularly people of African descent but people in general,” Coggs said.
via: https://nypost.com/2020/09/17/firefighter-who-hung-brown-figurine-from-ribbon-gets-suspended/
Photo Credit: Milwaukee Fire Department