D.C. Chief Fires Employee in Botched EMS Case

WASHINGTON-- DC's new fire chief, Dennis Rubin, on the job for 2 weeks, is wasting no time establishing his intent to take command of the department and sweep aside long-standing presumptions about how it is run.

In a dramatic announcement Monday morning, Rubin announced he is discarding the recommendations of an internal adjudication examining the conduct of 5 firefighters-emergency medical technicians and is firing 1 of them and suspending another.

"The decision that was rendered by the trial board provided a punishment that was simply too lenient," Rubin told reporters.

"My responsibility is to bring about wholesale changes, to curtail, if you will, what has been called a culture of indifference," he said.

The disciplinary action follows the death in January 2006 of noted New York Times reporter and editor David Rosenbaum, who died after he was beaten by muggers in his Northwest Washington neighborhood.

Firefighter-Emergency Medical Technicians who responded to a call reporting a man injured, found Rosenbaum, and treated him as a drunk rather than a seriously injured victim who needed immediate emergency care. He died of brain injuries within a day.

DC Mayor Adrian Fenty attended the press conference saying there has been what he called "government mismanagement and policy failure."

"There has to be accountability in the David Rosenbaum case, that there are specific instances of misconduct, of inappropriate work, that require the highest level of accountability from this government," he said, as he endorsed Rubin's disciplinary recommendations.

"It is my sincere hope that the battle cry of reform where we will provide the right measure of accountability, of openness, of transparency in the Fenty Administration comes through loud and clear in this decision," Rubin said.

Republished with permission of WUSA-TV.