San Francisco’s fire chief has quietly rescinded her reprimand of a battalion chief whose helmet-mounted camera captured the moment when a 16-year-old survivor of the Asiana Airlines crash at the airport was run over by a fire rig, reports The San Francisco Chronicle.
San Francisco Firefighter Disciplined for Helmet Cam
Chief Joanne Hayes-White had initially concluded that Battalion Chief Mark Johnson violated a 2009 department general order against unauthorized filming “in the workplace” and at stations when he recorded the July 6 crash scene with a personal camera he had installed atop his helmet.
The value of Johnson’s footage showing crash victim Ye Meng Yuan of China being run over by a rig — the second of two that struck and killed her — didn’t outweigh the privacy rights of other crash survivors and firefighters, the chief said at the time. The Fire Department could be held liable for violating federal medical-privacy laws if firefighters used the footage in unauthorized fashion, Hayes-White said.
Had her discipline order stood, the department would have put a letter of reprimand in Johnson’s file that could have hampered his possibilities for promotion. He was not facing suspension or firing.
Read more of the story herehttp://bit.ly/1iT6fjc
