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Wild FDNY Brawl at Bay Ridge Bar Sparks Investigation
By
John Del Signore
Published Feb 4, 2010
Modified Feb 4, 2010
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By
John Del Signore
Published Feb 4, 2010
Modified Feb 4, 2010
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A boozy brawl between more than two dozen firefighters and four unlucky civilians early Saturday morning left one man with a broken eye orbit bone, a broken collarbone and broken shoulder. The city's Department of Investigation and the NYPD are investigating the fight, which broke out at the Salty Dog in Bay Ridge after one of the civilians, a 21-year-old, reached for his shot glass and spilled a little booze on one of the firefighters. "It looked like he was saying ‘I’m sorry’ and the firefighter started yelling and screaming, and one of his buddies came around and punched him the face," witness Larry Johnson tells the Post. Pandemonium ensued, and judging from Johnson's account, the only thing missing was a ragtime piano player dodging pint glasses.
"I’ve seen a lot of fights and this had to have been the worst," Johnson recalls. "The guy who spilled the drink was with three other people. I saw four or five people get pulverized. They were kicking this guy’s ass bad." The civilians were all first cousins; one of them, age 35, was reportedly dragged into a bathroom and beaten by firefighters. But he managed to escape and hide in the basement with another cousin. "It was out of control," a Salty Dog barback tells the Daily News. "That's not something that happens all the time here. It was just crazy."
The investigation is focusing on Engine Co. 310 and Ladder Co. 174 on Snyder Avenue in East Flatbush. (Fire Commissioner Salvatore Cassano's nephew works in the same firehouse, though sources tell NY1 he was not in the bar.) Many of the firefighters, who were all off-duty, had been drinking at an annual dinner at Two Toms Restaurant in Gowanus before ending up at the Salty Dog.
No charges have been filed yet, but investigators are reviewing surveillance video from the fight, so hopefully that will surface soon and we can set it to some Scott Joplin music. It will also be interesting to see if this bar brawl matches up to the FDNY's brawl at McFadden's in 2008, which took NYPD officers from four precincts and the elite Emergency Services Unit over a quarter of an hour to break up. (That one started over a civilian wearing an FDNY T-shirt.)
Tagged
bar
brawl
fdny
fight
firefighters
salty dog
John Del Signore
Originally from the Albany area, John Del Signore has called NYC home since 1995. In addition to his thousands of meticulously-crafted bespoke blog posts for Gothamist, his writing has also been published in The Awl, Deadspin, The Nervous Breakdown, and performed at The Brick Theater in Brooklyn.
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Gothamist is funded by sponsors and member donations
Gothamist is funded by sponsors and member donations
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