The FDNY’s “Bad Lieutenant” Resigns Because the FDNY Has a Social Media Problem

About a month ago, the New York Post ran a frontpage story on Timothy Dluhos, a 12-year EMS lieutenant in Bed-Stuy with a really terrible social media presence. This guy was tweeting things like “I’m going to give up racial insults for Lent. Jesus that didn’t [last] too long. F–ken chinks can’t drive” and “That’s how King Jew sees it. Ban all guns & shootings will go down in NYC. But it’s the criminals w/the guns.” He ran under the moniker of “Bad Lieutenant” (appropriate) and he had Hitler holding a baby dinosaur as his profile picture (…appropriate?).

You didn’t have to see the Post‘s photo of Dluhos in tears to know that the official was immediately suspended for 30 days after the article’s publication. And, this weekend, he decided to resign instead of facing possible legal troubles once his suspension ended. So, officially, he is now a retiree that will receive a partial pension from the city.

We don’t know what it is about the city’s firefighters but, if their enforced social media guidelines are any indication, we’re pretty sure half of them need to get off Twitter ASAP. Just a few weeks ago, Commissioner Salvatore Cassano’s son was forced to resign as an EMS for also being an online jackass. And then we heard news of EMS officials posting photos of and jeering at their patients on Twitter. Oh, and there was that incident with Bill de Blasio’s campaign staffer tweeting like an idiot–that’s not FDNY-related, but it is more evidence of People Who Shouldn’t Be Allowed on the Internet.

So how about this rule: If you work at the FDNY as an EMS, you cannot have a Twitter account at all. Sorry, but if you can’t handle yourself in 140 characters or less, you probably shouldn’t be tweeting in the first place.