FDNY bosses will be barred from dating their underlings under a new, long-overdue policy on job-related relationships, officials told The Post.
“Managers and supervisors are prohibited from engaging in any romantic or intimate relationship with a subordinate they routinely supervise,” says the directive issued this week.
Under the policy, such couplings must be disclosed to higher-ups, so that one of the persons can be transferred.
If anyone “anticipates” starting a romantic relationship with a subordinate or someone likely to come under their supervision, “both parties are obligated to confidentially notify the Deputy Commissioner of Human Capital,” it states.
It’s the FDNY’s first such policy, and it comes as the legion of female firefighters has steadily increased to 177, but still less than 2 percent of the 11,030 total.
The policy will also cover EMS personnel (with 1,189 women in a force of 4,727) and civilian employees (624 women among 2,010).
Violators will be subject to discipline, which could include firing.
The FDNY hopes the new policy cuts down on sexual harassment cases.
Of 113 complaints of sex harassment in the FDNY over the last five years, 22 involved subordinates against supervisors, a spokesperson said.
Of those, the department substantiated eight complaints, and two remain under investigation.
Among the scandals, the city in 2020 agreed to pay $350,000 to Staten Island EMT Angelina Pivarnick, a star of reality TV’s “Jersey Shore,” who complained that one supervisor had hounded her for sex, and another groped her.
Enacting the prohibition came up for discussion several years ago, while Laura Kavanagh served as the FDNY’s first female commissioner, but she never executed it, sources said.
“This was sitting on the previous commissioner’s desk for a long time, and ultimately she left, never approving it,” an insider told The Post.
One impetus for the ban arose when a drill instructor at the Fire Academy started dating a probie firefighter, and it became an open secret.
“It made people uncomfortable – but there was no written rule against it,” an official said. The drill instructor was moved to work with other probies.
After Robert Tucker became fire commissioner last August, the issue came up again after The Post exposed explosive allegations that NYPD Chief of Department Jeffrey Maddrey had demanded sex from a subordinate in exchange for massive overtime.
Fire officials learned that the NYPD had enacted a policy banning sexual relationships between bosses and subordinates in 2022.
That came shortly after The Post broke a story about a video showing a male supervisor getting a lap dance from an underling at a bar.
In 2022, the city paid FDNY paramedic Maria Miranda $205,000 to settle complaints that male co-workers and supervisors – protected by the department’s “boys club” – bombarded her with dick pics and requests for dates, then retaliated when she reported them by forcing her to clean blood-splattered ambulances.
The new policy does not prohibit — but frowns upon — relationships between members of the same rank who work in the same unit or facility.
They “are encouraged to request a transfer,” it states.
The FDNY rule is stricter than the city’s Equal Employment and Opportunity Policy, which says, “Managers and supervisors are discouraged from engaging in any romantic or sexual relationship with a subordinate they supervise, even when consensual,” but the EEO requires either party to inform personnel officials to decide whether someone should be moved.
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