Lawsuit Filed by Arab-American member of YFD
By Dan Murphy
A federal lawsuit filed last week in Federal court alleges that a Yonkers Firefighter, David Daoud, was wrongfully suspended for 35 days after speaking out and filing a complaint against another YFD Officer who used a racial slur in his presence. The lawsuit, and the story behind it are a bit confusing, because more than one members of the YFD is involved and more than one slur is involved, painting a bad portrait of the Yonkers Fire Department only one year after similar allegations were made in the department.
The Yonkers Fire Department is the defendant in the suit. Daoud has been employed with the YFD since 2013.. He is an Arab-American and lives in Eastchester. The timeline of events, which was filed as part of the lawsuit, is as follows:
On October 12, 2018, Plaintiff was assigned to work the day tour at Yonkers Fire Station 13.While Plaintiff was having lunch with his colleagues, including two supervisors, Lts. James Callahan and Daniel Kime, one of his colleagues asked Plaintiff how he identified his ethnicity on the entrance exam. Plaintiff responded that he selected Caucasian as he is Middle Eastern and that was listed under Caucasian.
Lt. Kime, his supervisor, immediately responded, “He should have put down sand n-word.” Plaintiff was shocked and appalled by his supervisor’s use of a racist slur in front of his colleagues and another supervisor. Lt. Kime went on to say words to the effect that Plaintiff should not be sensitive about his use of the slur because there are firefighters in Plaintiff’s firehouse who brag about having killed Arabs while they were in military service.
Upon information and belief, Lt. Kime subsequently went on to relay the incidents to Plaintiff’s colleagues and supervisors in a way that misrepresented events and damaged Plaintiff’s reputation by claiming that Plaintiff had instigated an argument with Lt. Kime and had been insubordinate. Plaintiff complained to Deputy Chief of Personnel Daniel Flynn about the deeply humiliating discriminatory incident. On or about January 18, 2019, Callahan, told Plaintiff that Kime was merely “ribbing” him.
In January 2019, Firefighter Union President, Barry McGoey shared a memorandum via text with Plaintiff in which Lt. Kime merely received a written reprimand as discipline for his discriminatory actions.
Upon information and belief, instead of investigating the incident promptly and taking appropriate disciplinary action, Defendant delayed the investigation and prolonged the disciplinary process in order to allow Kime to retire with no disciple as planned in March of 2020.
On August 27, 2019, Plaintiff was summoned to meet with the Inspector General of Yonkers for an alleged egregious offense on the part of Plaintiff. A complaint against Plaintiff had apparently been lodged two to three weeks before.
Plaintiff was told that he is being investigated for using the slang term “nigga” on a social media platform. The complaint against Plaintiff was investigated by the Inspector General. This is out of the ordinary since all investigations of an employee of Defendant’s takes place internally within the Fire Department.
Upon information and belief, the investigation was conducted by the Inspector General rather than internally in retaliation for Plaintiff complaining about the discrimination that he had endured. On or about September 10, 2019, Plaintiff complained that he is being retaliated against.
In a Notice of Discipline dated December 16, 2019, Plaintiff was informed that he would be suspended without pay for thirty-five days causing him and his family undue financial hardship.
City Council President Mike Khader said, “Disheartened to read about the alleged retaliatory actions of our fire department toward one of its own. We have a great city workforce, however today I renew my call for the implementation of mandatory implicit bias and sensitivity training. There is no room for racism or discrimination in the city of Yonkers, this culture must change. If we continue to ignore this problem, these issues will become systemic in every department.”
Any comments on this story please email dmurphy@risingmediagroup.com.
