An FDNY chief who wrote harshly critical letters years ago about department efforts to hire more Black firefighters now says his shot at a major promotion went up in smoke because he refuses to disavow his controversial views.
Deputy Assistant Chief of Operations Michael Gala, in a Brooklyn Federal Court lawsuit, alleged he was ordered to recant the remarks or forfeit his opportunity for advancement last May. Court papers charge Gala was specifically instructed to declare “I am not the same man I was” when he wrote a pair of pointed letters to the editor in 2007 and 2011.
“God forbid someone started a white firefighters association,” Gala wrote in one of them. And the second asked “Where’s the justice?” when noting 97% of rappers were Black.
The lawsuit names FDNY Commissioner Daniel Nigro and the city as defendants in the case where Gala was denied a promotion to assistant chief of department.
“We had made a motion to dismiss the complaint and are awaiting a decision,” said Nick Paolucci, spokesman for the city Law Department. In its request for dismissal, city attorneys argued the letters were “racially divisive and inconsistent with FDNY policy.”
Gala wrote the letters during a drawn-out and bitter legal battle within the FDNY after it was sued by the Vulcan Society, the association of Black firefighters, in a groundbreaking discrimination case the department eventually lost.
He was one of several high-ranking officers who used the letters to the editor page of The Chief-Leader, a newspaper focused on civil service, as a soapbox to denounce the department’s push to diversify — falsely equating that effort with a lowering of FDNY safety and hiring standards.
In an incendiary letter written in February 2011, Gala called out the “self-anointed gate-keepers of the FDNY” — the president and former president of the Vulcan Society.
“These apparently are the men who have all the answers as to what’s wrong with the face of the New York City Fire Department,” he wrote. “Simply stated, it is too white. It is not black enough … If you are a black firefighter in this department and you have an opinion, then speak up, brother. If you are a female firefighter, then you may speak up as well.
“However, if you are a white male firefighter, keep your bigoted, racist opinions to yourself … God forbid someone started a white firefighters association.”
He also stated: “The frenzy to diversify this department (and only this department) at any cost will lead to its future ruination.”
In his suit filed in November, Gala claimed he was exercising his right to free speech when he wrote the letters.
“The denial of Plaintiff’s promotion presents a textbook First Amendment violation,” said the lawsuit. “Even if one disagrees with the plaintiff’s statements from years ago regarding the FDNY’s hiring standards … there can be no disagreement about their status as protected speech.”
Gala’s July 2007 letter blasted Vulcan Society President John Coombs over his suggestions for diversifying the department.
“Another idea of his is that the written test be pass/fail and the physical be competitive,” wrote Gala. “How naive of him to think that white males won’t do better in a competitive physical than blacks. It also sounds racist.”
Gala’s letter ended with this: “On a final note of interest, a recent survey of music shows that among rappers, 99% are males and 97% are black. Where’s the justice?”
Gala joined the FDNY in 1987, and was twice promoted after writing the letters: To deputy chief in 2014 and deputy assistant chief two years later. Court documents portray his writings to The Chief-Leader as opposition to “efforts to relax the FDNY’s hiring standards” — and Gala acknowledges “wading into a hot-button issue that triggered strong emotions.”
A city source indicated Nigro, who took over as FDNY commissioner in 2014, didn’t know Gala all that well. But because the 2020 promotion was to a very high rank, Gala was asked to recant over concerns the letters “could have been disruptive to agency employees,” the source explained.
Gala’s son Robert followed his father into the FDNY by joining EMS as an emergency medical technician — a way to fast-track becoming firefighter — only to get arrested last September for impersonating a cop and swiping 180 oxycodone pills from a man during a phony “arrest,” Brooklyn prosecutors alleged last year.
Robert Gala resigned from the FDNY in 2019 after a Department of Investigation probe found that he flagged himself for fake calls to avoid responding to emergency ambulance calls — and forged his partner’s signature in a cover-up.
According to the federal lawsuit, Gala was told this past May by FDNY Chief of Department John Sudnick of his impending promotion — with a single caveat.
“Commissioner Nigro wanted Plaintiff to send an email renouncing opinions he had expressed in his letters to The Chief-Leader many years ago,” the court papers recount. “… Although plaintiff was willing to clarify in writing that he deeply valued diversity and never intended his letters to offend anymore, he declined to retract his prior statements.”
