I.P. firefighters criticized for drinking in Irish Day parade

Parents and residents are criticizing some Island Park Fire Department firefighters who passed bottles of beer around and drank from them as they marched down Beech Street during the Irish Day Parade on Oct. 2, saying that their behavior gave children the wrong impression on a day that was meant to celebrate Irish heritage.

Judi Vining, coordinator of the Long Beach Coalition to Prevent Underage Drinking, said she and other parents saw several firefighters drinking as they marched past Grand and Beech streets.

Some concerned parents brought the issue up at the coalition’s meeting on Oct. 6, Vining said, and at a Long Beach High School parents-and-principal meeting on Oct. 5, according to one of the parents. Vining said that because young people view firefighters as role models and heroes, “watching them parading with beer bottles sends the wrong message,” and that she and other parents were troubled by the incident.

“They were literally drinking from bottles of Heineken, passing them back and forth,” Vining said, adding that parents looked on in shock. Parade organizers said that drinking in the parade is prohibited.

City Manager Charles Theofan said that although he was unaware of the incident, drinking among marchers during the parade is not condoned, and for the most part, people obeyed the rules this year. Police were out in force on Irish Day and issued 39 summonses, many of them for public drinking, along with nine arrests ranging from disorderly conduct to drunken driving.

On Monday, the coalition sent a letter to Island Park Fire Department Chief Edward Madden, urging him to talk to members of the department about “how they present themselves to impressionable youth so that in future parades, the image of the Island Park Fire Department is one of which you can be proud.”

For his part, Madden said that he was aware of the coalition’s letter and that the issue had already been addressed. He said that three or four members of the department, out of 34 who marched in the parade, erred in judgment. The beers, he said, were given to the men as they marched past some parade-goers who were cheering them on, and while they should have refused, the men “became caught up in the moment.”