San Francisco firefighters are some of the city's best-paid public employees. In addition to good salaries, benefits, and the public's high esteem, city firefighters also enjoy the ability to drink on the job — legally.
The SFFD has a "zero tolerance" policy for consuming alcohol while working. But since the threshold for suspension is a 0.04 percent blood alcohol content, zero tolerance would allow a 200-pound man to drink up to three beers in an hour and be fit for duty, according to Moderation.org. And that's only if the firefighter is tested. Firefighters are subjected to random alcohol testing, but only during an inspector's shift, which runs 7 a.m. to 3 p.m. Monday through Friday. In other words, the sauce could start flowing at 3:01 p.m. and nobody would really know.
District Attorney George Gascon, who unsuccessfully tried to prosecute a legally intoxicated former firefighter whose rig hit a motorcyclist in 2013, pointed all this out in a letter to Fire Chief Joanne Hayes-White last year. Hayes-White never offered a response. But The Chronicle ran an op-ed demanding that zero-tolerance mean zero. Don't expect a sudden change, however: The department's alcohol testing policy hasn't been updated since 2011, and any shift will likely result in a long drawn-out battle with the firefighters' union (which incidentally has been pushing for Hayes-White to resign for months for unrelated reasons).
Expect all this to resurface in court, where the injured motorcyclist is suing the department and the city.
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