FF/Police: Friends or foes?

[Kate]

After reading the "Sometimes FF's Are Stupid" thread, I was wondering what the working relationships are like between the the police and fire depts where you live. Are there feuds and rivalries, or is there a mutual respect for the other?

I did a little bit of research and found that most of the feuds between the two departments are because of money (unions/labor disputes). Is that an issue in your city/town?

[acreature]

None where I live. Though I work P/T as FF, and F/T as LEO. I am truly unbiased to either. Well, not really..... I get soooooo bored as FF waiting for a call. I enjoy the proactive part of being LEO, rather than being 100% reactive as FF.

[Sgt. Pepper]

That seems to be the case in some areas. I sdisagree about the reactive bit sorry, but we do alot when we aren't on call. There is alot of fire prevention education and comunity out reach, yes we wait but there are plenty of training and work to be done. We keep on our toes. We finished 2 months ago an electric car extraction mod. and alternative fuel mod. i try to keep our volly up todate. As far as my paid dept. thats up to the trainers. I think we are up to snuff, though they are still trying to get the units we went through set up with me so i can teach them. We do ocasionaly butt heads with PD it can be about the money, but overall we get along well we have BBQs together and play hockey and softball. Now just to get EMS part of the funding it needs. Hard to slplit so little 3 ways.

[nhexplorerpost2]

There are no problems that I am aware of where I am. That does not mean that they do not exist though. Some times when I am on a ride-along with the police department we stop over at the fire department and we all eat lunch or dinner together. For the most part I think that in my city everyone is pretty close like a huge FF and LEO family.

[Metallic4]

As far as I can tell/see, the police and firefighters in my city are like brothers. I haven't heard of any bad blood between the two depts, and they always seem to work well together on calls. The police officers will go and take breaks at the FD, etc.

[dwf]

The city I worked for prior to going out into the land beyond the streetlights, had real problems between fire and police. And yes, it was all about the money. The police union was very strong and made some gains at what fire thought was their expense. It went downhill from there.

Out in the county we get along great with the volunteer FD's.

[Oldbillplod]

The firefighters are very militant in my county and for the best part we dont get on, they believe they should get the same money as us and when they dont they go on strike and we have to take their places with the army to fight fires.

[P01IC3M4N]

i applied with an agency and the first they told me in an interview was they didn't get along with their FD and should i get hired, i was to be professional, but not to associate with them. i withdrew my application.

my department really gets along with our FD. they're really good guys. they help us and we help them. i think it's important for the emergency services to be able to work together without any tension between the two. i was a volunteer ff for 6 years and a first responder for a county ambulance for 7. our FD guys know that and love it when i can help them out. a few weeks ago they had an apartment fire. only 2 guys were able to respond until mutual aid came because the others were all tied up on other calls. i hung out in the smoke to get them equipment, help them get suited up, get power shut off, etc. while they were getting ready, i was pulling hose for them.

when those precious seconds count, you should really be able to work together. there's no reason the police and fire can't be on the same team.

[dep214]

i am in the dfw area. what dept told you not to have anything to do with the fd?

[sbrad]

We get along just fine, but there is really no comradarie...althought they do always find the most efficient way to take a perfectly good free-flow of traffic and f*ck it up with their truck.

And the fire stations are a great place to pee when the going gets tough.

[Stump]

Police and fire dept get along here just fine. They do two completely different jobs, so there isn't any rivalry/hate. Quite often, the police have to clear a scene before fire can come in, and when they don't, fire usually cancels the police.
Some of the people on this board hate FF's for their own personal reasons, not because they are cops or because "cops hate FF's".

[Cobra]

We both get along quite well around here.

[Riaghan]

We get along great. We have four officers who are also firefighters, some of us are EMTs so we don't mind helping the FD guys. Its a half volunteer, half full-time FD and they do a kickass job. There was some complaints about them blocking up intersections, but ya know what... I'd rather have safe hose jockies than writing a report because one of 'em got run over. I'll run traffic all days for those guys.

[Babysmamadrama]

We get along pretty good with the FD guys. They make a bit more money then us but no big deal. Some firefighters out here make about 70k because of the area they service.

The only time we really have problems is during the annual Guns and Hoses boxing matches. The firefighters lose all the time and get drunk and want to talk smack later. But other than that its ok.

[MOCOP]

We get along good with the VFD's here. But the ones where I used to work were real wiener's uh I mean winners