Last week, we read the news about a young man wearing a fire department t-shirt who was fooling around as a passenger in a car. He was filmed by a witness who made the video public and it went viral. This led the firefighter to… Suspension of the department.
I had been thinking about how young people in particular need to be educated about the power of social media and the need to keep their firefighter identities separate from any personal acts. After all, there is always someone watching, and any action taken in a public forum could become clickbait on social media. On the other hand, it is important for organizations and their leaders to avoid overreacting in response to small transgressions by young people. After all, we all did impulsive and stupid things when we were young, and it would be a shame to fire an otherwise good member because of one bad act.
This latter conclusion does not apply to some more recent incidents that have emerged.
Comments on the attempted murder
Two similar social media gaffes made the news this week, both related to comments posted following the attempted assassination of former President Donald Trump, an incident in which several bystanders were injured and one died:
Let’s just say that the officers took note of what they had expected as an “alternative” outcome to the shooting.
There are three critical differences between the firefighter who drove without a license and the captain and chief who commented on the attempted murder:
- The content of the behavior: Although one person described them as “dark humor,” the posts related to the shooting alluded to violence and were clearly inappropriate under any circumstances.
- The position of the person posting that content: Who wrote the posts related to the shooting? Not some immature, rookie firefighter, but a captain and a chief, people who had been hand-picked by their organizations to advance into positions of trust and leadership; people who are supposed to set standards and give the example for others to follow.
- The voluntary and public nature of the contents: The posts related to the shooting were made public voluntarily. No one secretly recorded what these people said. Both officers resigned from their positions as a result of these incidents. And rightly so. They used poor judgment, and that, more than anything else, is what gets firefighters into trouble. The community demands more from its emergency services.
It’s all about making decisions
Sometimes when I taught a class on a topic like diversity or harassment, participants would demand specific standards of conduct. They wanted a list of what they could and couldn’t do, and anything not specifically mentioned would be considered acceptable. But that’s not the world we live in, and it’s certainly not the essence of a firefighter’s job.
Being a firefighter involves exercising judgment and making good decisions. Training can address basic skills and provide guidelines for strategy and tactics. Firefighters can learn by studying the responses and outcomes of others. But every fire, every rescue, every medical call is different and requires unique decision-making based on the circumstances at hand.
The same applies to professional conduct outside of the emergency response realm. Guidelines can be set for social media use. Some obvious ones would include not making threats, not defaming anyone, not breaching confidentiality. But written guidelines and rules can never cover every contingency. If you just want people to follow the rules and never use their personal judgment, being a firefighter wouldn’t be that hard. The most challenging thing is making good decisions, especially under pressure.
If there was one rule to follow, it would be this: never do anything that violates the trust of your coworkers and your community. Firefighters are part of a select group of people who are supposed to be trustworthy and whose ability to function depends on that trust. If you destroy that trust, you’re out of business.
Firefighters depend on each other in emergency situations, and they need to depend on each other in other circumstances as well. If someone is in the process of making a bad decision, speak up. Speaking up in this way not only protects a fellow employee, but also firefighters in general, as one person’s bad action reflects on everyone.
