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A day after a Bronx teenager drowned after getting caught in a Rockaway riptide, the Parks Department is suspending a lifeguard who was photographed wearing his iPod headphones while working at a nearby beach. Mayor Bloomberg was quick to lash out at the unnamed city employee, telling reporters, "He certainly wasn't doing what he was supposed to be doing." The mayor also urged anyone on the beaches who spots something similar to call 311. Beachgoers in Rockaway told the Post headphones on the lifeguards who start out making $13.50 an hour are just the tip of the iceberg—one resident said, "Half the time, they're chatting with people. They're listening to music. They're on their cellphones. They're texting with people." The lifeguard in the photo could be fired if he has been on the job for less than a year; it'll at least be a consideration after a hearing if he's been around longer. A Parks Department spokesman said, "This is an unacceptable violation of our regulations, which is not representative of the dedication and diligence displayed by the vast majority of our over 1,300 lifeguards."
Rockaway Lifeguard Caught With iPod On
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Another piece of crack reporting by the Post.
According to the paper, the photo was taken at 10:08 am on Sunday, 8 minutes after he went on duty. Wasn't it raining heavily on Sunday? I doubt there was anyone in the water.
Show me a picture of a full beach and a lifeguard wearing headphones, then I'll be concerned.
Drowning is a priviledge, not a right! Wait. Maybe thats not it.
What about cops on cells? It's rare to see an officer not chatting on his cell or texting these days.
Isn't that akin to "Bus Driver Caught Wearing Two Eye Patches"
I bet he was listening to the Beach Boys!
You should try comedy for a living.
Of course the drowning has nothing to do with going into the water and not being able to swim. After all, isn't the city supposed to save me from myself?
$13.50/hour for 1300 employees? What a waste of money.
Hasn't anyone ever heard of the buddy system? These lifeguards are clearly not doing much but stealing money from taxpayers.
If you haven't noticed, a lot of kids (and adults) who can't swim at all go to the beach and get in trouble. We can either shut down all the beaches or pay people to keep an eye out. Of all the trillions of dollars the government wastes money on, giving kids summer jobs doesn't seem like a bad thing to me.
Or, we could put up signs saying, "If you can't swim, don't go in the water. If you still do, you're an idiot and may drown. NYS is not responsible."
We shouldn't have to pay for babysitters for people all of the time. Giving some kids summer jobs is great, but 1300 of them, especially at $13.50?? A full-time nanny in NYC gets paid $15-20 and does a hell of a lot more than a lifeguard, as is clearly evidenced by this story. No wonder this state is going bankrupt.
A nanny is busier from moment to moment, but a lifeguard is like a fireman. I knew a few growing up in Bklyn and yes, they actually really did pull drowning people out of the ocean at least once a week, sometimes every day. It seems like a paltry sum of money for the city to pay.
Oh, yes, those are clearly the only two options: pay lots of money or shut the beaches down. It shouldn't be the government's job to babysit its populace every second of the day. As far as I am concerned, fire all the lifeguards and use the flag system they used where I grew up. You have flags all over the beach with signs explaining what they mean in various languages. It works perfectly well. People still drown, but they do that even when there are lifeguards around...especially when the lifeguards are listening to their ipods. Do people really go to the beach expecting that some mysterious government agent will magically save them if they get their stupid asses in trouble? Swimming is always a risky venture, lifeguard or no.
@longacre
Remember blacks can't swim or read. Once saw a lifeguard go after a black exchange student that drowned in the deep end of the pool. The lifeguard was pissed as hell when he realized his digital camera was in his pants. The lifeguard was black by the way.
Fun fact, I was at Rockaway yesterday waiting out the storm in a bar. Lifeguard came in and got a big thermos container filled up with booze to go.
you think $13.50 is a waste? dialing 311 is waste—nothing ever materializes... it's akin to sending a 911 text.
311 is just a human paid to fill out website forms from www.nyc.gov over the phone for senior citizens that can't internet.
In Bloombergville a lifeguard wearing an iPod should be fired right away, but Fire Commissioner Nicholas Scoppetta lets FDNY ignore every safety regulation permitting "two firefighters died on the burning upper floors of the former Deutsche Bank building, trapped in a maze of demolition equipment and blocked stairwells and cut off from water by a disconnected standpipe" and keeps a job he was never qualified to have (He was never a firefighter).
Bloomberg has a natural knack for stomping only the bottom end of the pay scale.
There have been a lot of fire commissioners that were not firefighters including one of the biggest a holes of all who is now the commissioner of OEM. Just pray that we don't have a serious event in NYC while that fool is at the helm.
They never had this problem on Baywatch. David Hasselhoff ran a tight shift even though he was found humming a tune all the time before his singing career took off. I remember when Pamela Anderson was working the day shift ...
Oh the good old days.
They never had this problem on Baywatch. David Hasselhoff ran a tight shift even though he was found humming a tune all the time before his singing career took off. I remember when Pamela Anderson was working the day shift ...
Oh the good old days.
The law of averages requires at least a few people drowned during the long Baywatch montages. Who could hear the yelling in the water after the music was brought up?
Another kid drowned tonight, but it was after lifeguards had left for the day.
My husband used to be a life guard in college...the amount of stories he has told me from guards sleeping on the chairs, drunk on the chairs, listening to their CD players (at the time lol) is disgusting.
One time he told me that one of his guards put his little 11 year old brother on the chair while he went to get something to eat!
Tabloids, usually blaring distasteful headlines, at times, perhaps unwittingly, expose a story that other media care little about. Such is the case here.
The lifeguard "culture" that has been allowed to flourish under NYC lifeguard managers Peter Stein and Richard Sher for the past 40 years would have some beach lifeguard supervisors so disconnected from staff that this type of activity is the norm. Chief Lifeguard Janet Fash, who has been trying for years to "blow the whistle" on corruption within the system, has been blown off by the Parks Commissioner Adrian Benepe and ostracized by Stein and Sher. One wonders where this young lifeguard's supervisors were while he sat exposed for the world to see. Why not suspend them as well?
This is nothing, I've seen lifeguards on Rockaway flat out sleeping under beach towels... while on duty. They think of it as "getting paid to hang out on the beach." Almost like a bartender going to work "to drink." But I'm from a big lifeguard neighborhood, a lot of whom work on Rockaway, and some of them actually dedicate themselves to their job. Unfortunately, I can honestly say this guy is apart of a majority.
I was a lifeguard throughout high school and college. The protocols vary according to the setting; the beach is the most intense, pays the most, and requires the most training. It also requires the most attention as you're in charge of thousands of square feet. Oceans being more difficult than lakes, of course.
Pools are the easiest.
My point is, you should never wear earphones at a beach; due to the size, you never know where and when someone may enter or exit the water or beach. At a pool, it's pretty clear when there's no one there and you should be able to read a book or listen to music.
I'd give this kid one more chance. I'm a two strikes kind of guy.
You may remember that Sunday, when the picture was taken, was incredibly rainy and dismal. The beach was completely cleared due to lightning not soon after 10am. Give the lifeguard a break. Listening to music when there's zero guarding to do seems reasonable.
If the picture had been taken on a busy day, however, I'd say keelhaul him!