Statter911.com has an article about the City of Chicago Inspector General (IG) trying to dictate disciplinary measures within the Chicago Fire Department … again. At issue this time is a CFD battalion chief (BC) that allowed his adult son to ride-along and bunk-in. The IG wanted a 20-day suspension for the BC, while Commissioner Hoff dispensed a verbal reprimand.
The article quotes CFD Spokesman Larry Langford and a column on Huff Post Chicago by Alden Loury the publisher of The Chicago Reporter.
Introduced by the IG is an opinion that the commissioner’s stance has to do with his childhood. (from Huff Post Chicago):
In the opening scenes of the 1991 Ron Howard filmBackdraft, two young brothers are horsing around in the Chicago firehouse where their father works when an emergency call comes in. As firefighters ready their engine to answer the call, the younger brother beams when his dad asks if he wants to ride along.
The movie is loosely based on the lives of Chicago Fire Commissioner Robert Hoff and his older brother Raymond Hoff, third-generation Chicago firefighters whose father was killed fighting a fire in a South Side apartment building in 1962, according to media reports.
The film came to mind recently because Commissioner Hoff — presumably depicted as the younger brother in Backdraft who rode along with his firefighter-father — is now at the center of a controversy involving fire department “ride alongs.”
The Statter911 article can be found HERE, and the Huff Post Chicago article can be found HERE.
