HOLY SMOKE!
Drunk FDNY big crashes car with cocaine in his wallet
Steve Cassidy, who headed the firefighters union for 14 years and has since run the city’s Fire Pension Fund, was busted yesterday for crashing his government car while allegedly drunk.
He blew it. The FDNY’s pension boss was busted Wednesday for crashing his city-issued car in Manhattan while drunk and carrying cocaine — then lost his $200,000-a-year gig, authorities said.
Steve Cassidy, the executive director of the city’s Fire Pension Fund and former longtime president of the firefighters union, mounted the sidewalk in his Toyota Prius at Seventh Avenue and West 30th Street just before midnight Tuesday night.
The 62-year-old Kips Bay resident then plowed into a dumpster — narrowly missing pedestrians, video of the crash shows.
“The cops said he was beyond drunk,” a witness, Jakob Grabel, 19, told The Post. “He was sitting in the driver’s seat just kind of dazed.”
The dumpster was propelled into a storefront, damaging the building, but no one was injured.
“The door was crunched in, about a foot. It’s all lopsided now,” said a worker at a loading dock that suffered some of the damage.
Cassidy was so hammered that good Samaritans had to hoist him out of the vehicle in a bear hug, security footage shows — and then keep him from falling over or stumbling off before police arrived, witnesses added.
“A couple of men were trying to hold the guy up because he was clearly out of his mind,” said FIT student Gabby Guarnaccia, 19.
When cops arrived, a shaky Cassidy moved in slow motion as he struggled to get inside their van, video that Grabel recorded shows.
Cassidy was carrying in his wallet a yellow envelope containing cocaine, cops said.
They took him to NYU Langone medical center for blood tests before hauling him off to the Midtown South Precinct station house just before 6 a.m., sources said.
Cassidy was charged with criminal possession of a controlled substance and DWI, a first offense.
Dressed in a collared shirt and a gray sports coat, he said nothing to reporters as he was escorted out of the station house in handcuffs and placed in the back of a squad car Wednesday afternoon.
Hours later, FDNY Commissioner Daniel Nigro announced that Cassidy had been fired.
“In light of the incident involving Stephen Cassidy last night and his subsequent arrest, effective immediately I have removed him from his position as executive director of the New York City Fire Pension Fund,” Nigro said in a statement.
Nigro appointed Cassidy to oversee the multibillion-dollar fund in 2016 when Cassidy stepped down as president of the Uniformed Firefighters Association after 14 years.
“Steve Cassidy has served as a trustee of the Fire Pension Fund for more than 14 years, and his knowledge of the system is unequaled by any uniformed member,” Nigro said at the time.
The fund provides benefits to more than 17,000 retired firefighters.
Cassidy raked in total pay of $212,044 in 2017, according to data posted online by See Through NY.