A firefighter claims his dreams of being on an elite FDNY rescue squad were crushed when his co-workers began suspecting he is gay.
Jason Johnson, 40, a former National Guardsman, says in his Manhattan federal lawsuit filed Monday that he made it to a Special Operations Command unit in 2016, only to be kicked off the team several months later following a bizarre crotch-grabbing incident while riding a firetruck, which resulted in Johnson being branded as “gay.”
During the ride — and “while being watched by other firefighters” — firefighter Jason Ribisi, who is now retired, “grabbed Johnson’s penis” in an apparent effort to harass the newcomer, the lawsuit alleges. Johnson responded by trying to kiss Ribisi in an effort to make him feel “equally uncomfortable,” the suit says, but the maneuver completely backfired.