Meet the flameout who wants to be a smoke-eater.
A firefighter wannabe who failed the FDNY physical test three times has sued the city and the department, demanding he get the job anyway, in a brazen effort an FDNY source called “absurd.”
Kevin Walker, 47, had been a lead plaintiff in the Vulcan Society’s class-action case against the city, which accused the department of discriminating against minority firefighter applicants and was settled in 2014 for $100 million. The Jamaica, Queens, resident got $22,500 of that payout.
Because of Walker’s participation in the case, he became a “priority hire” when he passed the 2013 qualifying exam and would have been allowed to come aboard well past the usual maximum age of 35 — but was not able to because he repeatedly flunked the physical test.
“It’s my understanding that he petitioned the court to just put him in. That’s absurd if you’ve already proven . . . that you can’t get it done,” an FDNY source said.
Walker first failed a practice test on May 13, 2013, for “grasping at the wall or handrail three times” while on a stair machine, the city said in court documents.
In his next test a week later, he didn’t even make it past the 20-second warmup on the stair machine and was failed because he “fell or dismounted” three times.
But Walker complained that the proctor made an error, and the department agreed to give him another shot.
On the do-over two days later, however, he flunked yet again for failing to complete the entire Candidate Physical Ability Test in the allotted time of 10 minutes and 20 seconds. He hit the time limit while still on the seventh of the test’s eight challenges.
After his attempts to appeal the failure were rejected, Walker sued the city in Manhattan Supreme Court in 2016, asking a judge to appoint him “to the position of firefighter with the seniority he would have if not for the irrational disqualification.”
In his suit — which lists slightly different dates for the tests and describes the machine he struggled with as a “treadmill” rather than the city’s StepMill — he claims that the proctor first failed him as retaliation for his role in the Vulcan suit, and that the same proctor then flunked him again by recording a bogus time.
Walker didn’t have a watch during the test but insists he had time to spare.
“Petitioner was going through the obstacle course even quicker than prior occasions but was suddenly stopped (with less than a minute to complete the obstacle course) by the examiner he had complained about claiming the time was up,” his suit reads.
Responding in court documents, the city said Walker failed fair and square and noted that he had provided no evidence to prove his time was recorded inaccurately or that the proctors knew of his involvement in the lawsuit.
“Petitioner provides no basis, other than his alleged ‘thought’ or ‘belief,’ to support his assertion that the proctor even knew that petitioner was a lead plaintiff in the Vulcan lawsuit,” the city wrote in a 2016 motion to dismiss.
Manhattan Supreme Court Justice Carmen Victoria St. George dismissed Walker’s suit on Dec. 14 because his place on the Civil Service list of eligible applicants had expired, so placing him in the department would be unconstitutional. She encouraged him to retake the test.
“The department and city made significant efforts to ensure that priority hires from the Vulcan suit were brought onto the job,” a city Law Department spokesman said in a statement.
“The court ruled that this particular candidate could not be hired because his eligibility under the civil service list had expired.”
Walker’s attorney did not respond to requests for comment, and Walker could not be reached for comment.
Additional reporting by Kenneth Garger