Freetown firefighter fired over racist facebook posts
By Kirsten Glavin
@kirstenglavin
FREETOWN, MA – Freetown Fire Chief Gary Silvia announced Thursday that he is cutting ties with 5-year, part-time firefighter Kyle Grenier over racist Facebook posts.
He fired Grenier just two hours after seeing the comments.
"I think he’s sorry now but it’s just too late (…) he was one of my most active firefighters I had on the call force and I’m very, very disappointed,” said Chief Silvia.
The comments started over a massive house party in Freetown, thrown less than two weeks prior to Grenier’s firing. Grenier posted to facebook:
"I can see the next fire call will be this house on fire, and I’ll make sure I can’t find the hydrant lol," and "just make sure no water so no more house parties with black Boston people."
"He did use the word ‘black’ in them, so I guess you could consider that racist,” said the chief.
Even though Freetown does not have any social media policies in place for its fire department the chief added it is something they may need to address.
"It’s obviously something we’re going to have to look more closely at, maybe finding a better way of policing it and we’ll take it from there."
Grenier never returned our call for comment.
