Blue Watch
Theo Spark, busy all week digging up potatoes, unearthed this odd tale about firefighters reprimanded for disturbing gay sex act:
Four firemen who disturbed an outdoor gay sex session have been reprimanded and heavily fined after they were accused by one of the participants of being homophobic.
The firemen shone their torches from their engine into bushes on the Downs - an area of parkland in Bristol said to be popular with people engaging in late-night outdoor sex known as “dogging” - interrupting the four as they were involved in a gay sex act.
One of the group later contacted the AIDS charity, the Terrence Higgins Trust, who advised him to make a formal complaint.
That led to the firefighters being suspended while a three month investigation was carried out.
Two of them have now been fined up to £1,000; one has been demoted in rank and the other given a written warning. Each of them has also been ordered to attend a two-day equality course.
Their treatment has angered colleagues, who have accused fire chiefs of political correctness and of treating the firemen like “criminals”.
The fines are to be donated to a nominated gay-rights charity. The charity under consideration is the Jamaican Forum for Lesbians All-Sexuals and Gays (J-FLAG), as Bristol has a large Jamaican community, although no final decision has been made.
The four-man crew have also been transferred to other stations.
The complainant is now said to be “happy” at the outcome of the disciplinary hearings - but he will not face any police investigation into what he and the other men were doing in the area.
The firemen, formerly members of Avon Fire Service’s Blue Watch at Avonmouth station, Bristol, were accused of bringing the service into disrepute, and with the misuse of fire equipment.
Blue Watch, indeed. Unfortunately, that article is vague on what utterance or action of the firefighters upon encountering four men engaged in sex in public qualified as homophobic, and what constitutes misuse of fire equipment, so it’s hard to judge whether the official reaction is appropriate or not. Here’s someone from a gay advocacy group that got the wheels rolling on three-month investigation, fines, demotion and PC-training for the firefighters:
Simon Nelson, of the Terrence Higgins Trust, said: “We don’t support or condone sex in public places.
“The member of the public simply wanted to know why the fire service was on the Downs at that time of day.
The same apparently was not asked of the member of the public.
“We work very closely with the police, but in this case the complainant asked us not to report this incident to the police.”
Why not, if the complainant’s civil rights had been aggrieved in a homophobic misuse of fire equipment?
A spokesman for Avon and Somerset police said: “It is an offence to commit an act which is lewd, obscene or disgusting in a public place which is capable of outraging public decency.
“If any complaint is made in relation to such an incident it would be investigated thoroughly and, where appropriate, action would be taken to arrest any offender.”
Oh. That explains the reluctance to involve the cops. You’d think if there was an incident involving wrongdoing, a responsible social action group would want to see a thorough response on all parties who were engaged in it. The Terrence Higgins Trust by the way is a group mainly focused on gay sexual health issues. I guess a group sex act in public being interrupted by misused fire equipment could qualify as a sexual health concern, depending on the kind of equipment and the intensity with which it was applied. But I hope they also gave those four lads a good talking to about the health hazards of group sex in public.
Guardian article indicates the misuse of fire equipment was limited to shining of flashlights, and perhaps taking a fire engine on circuitous route back to the firehouse. Here, curiously, TH Trust complaint is that the firefighters limited themselves to shining a light on public sex, but neglected to call the cops:
Simon Nelson, regional manager for the Bristol branch of the trust, said: “We got a call from a member of the public asking us to make inquiries as to why a fire engine was seen at a specific site in the early hours of the morning with torches shining in the bushes. The firemen may or may not have seen an illegal activity within, but we are not privy to that information. If they did see something we’d like them to do what any member of the public should, which is report it to the police.”
So that’s what the problem is. Vigilante activity on the part of the Blue Watch. I’m sure the three-month investigation must have unearthed something about the nature of illegal activity that was or was not observed, but the fire department isn’t talking. Sounds like these firefighters got in trouble for shining a light on a public safety and health problem. Lengthy inquiries, stiff fines and demotions for homophobic misdirection of flashlight beams are sure to go a long way to engendering more positive gay-straight relations within the department.
Speaking of looking for love in all the wrong places, you probably already know that a judge signalled “No” to Larry Craig’s effort to withdraw his guilty plea, and that Craig has signalled he does not intend to step down after all. Speaking of lovelorn congressmen, Newsbusters ponders, party germane?
Topics: other
Posted by Jules Crittenden at 7:59 am on Friday, October 5, 2007
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October 5th, 2007 at 10:55 am
There’s a wise old saying: “Get a room.”