Fire chief suspended after he was filmed shouting 'Shut the f**k up!' at girl, 10, being stretchered into ambulance
In a TikTok video uploaded on Monday, North Babylon Fire Chief Peter Alt berated and hurled obscenities at the 10–year–old girl while she was being strapped onto a stretcher.
'Shut the f**k up! It's like this with you every f**king week!' Alt shouted at the child.
As the young girl pleaded with the fire department 'I don't want to go! I want to go home,' Alt responded 'Shut your mouth!'
Alt's outburst came after the girl's family called emergency services for help with calming the child down, her grandmother told NBC New York.
The girl allegedly became emotionally overwhelmed after her phone was taken away, so another family member called the police, who had been kind to them in the past.
A concerned neighbor saw the verbal altercation and began recording.
The child's grandmother, who wished to remain anonymous, said she was not there when the incident took place, but that she was 'devastated' by how the chief handled her granddaughter.
'Maybe it was a blessing I wasn't there because I would have jumped all over this guy,' she told the outlet.
'When you call for help – the police, the fire department – they're supposed to help you. Not treat you like garbage. And curse at a child at that.'
The North Babylon Fire Company issued a response soon after, condemning Alt's behavior as 'unacceptable' and saying they don't condone it.
'We have become aware of an incident which occurred last night, August 4, 2025 between a member of the North Babylon Fire Company and a minor during an aided call wherein the member is alleged to have used inappropriate language toward the minor,' the statement read.
Alt was 'relieved of all of his duties pending a full and thorough investigation,' according to the press release, which promised that 'appropriate action will be taken.'
The press release provided little comfort to residents who expressed concern over the incident.
'That's not a professional way to deal with people,' said Mark Simms, a neighbor. 'I wouldn't want him to speak to my children like that or anyone in my family. I'd be outraged myself.'
The neighbor said that emergency services have been called to this house before, but they've never responded with such aggression.
'There's been a few times over the summer where police were called, but they've never treated her like that,' he said.
Other neighbors are glad the incident was captured on video, so that the chief's behavior can be appropriately addressed.
Comments on the TikTok video expressed outrage over the chief's outburst.
One user called out the other responders' reaction, 'The SILENCE of those other "men" is almost worse. Outrageous!'
'SILENCE IS COMPLIANCE. The others should feel ashamed for not standing up for that child,' another agreed.
Another TikTok account said, 'This is how chief Peter alt of north Babylon fire department speaks to a young girl in an emergency with zero compassion why is he employed???'
Hashtags
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
The Independent
44 minutes ago
- The Independent
Schools are using AI surveillance to protect students. It also leads to false alarms — and arrests
Lesley Mathis knows what her daughter said was wrong. But she never expected the 13-year-old girl would get arrested for it. The teenage girl made an offensive joke while chatting online with her classmates, triggering the school's surveillance software. Before the morning was even over, the Tennessee eighth grader was under arrest. She was interrogated, strip-searched and spent the night in a jail cell, her mother says. Earlier in the day, her friends had teased the teen about her tanned complexion and called her ' Mexican,' even though she's not. When a friend asked what she was planning for Thursday, she wrote: 'on Thursday we kill all the Mexico's.' Mathis said the comments were 'wrong' and 'stupid,' but context showed they were not a threat. 'It made me feel like, is this the America we live in?' Mathis said of her daughter's arrest. 'And it was this stupid, stupid technology that is just going through picking up random words and not looking at context.' Surveillance systems in American schools increasingly monitor everything students write on school accounts and devices. Thousands of school districts across the country use software like Gaggle and Lightspeed Alert to track kids' online activities, looking for signs they might hurt themselves or others. With the help of artificial intelligence, technology can dip into online conversations and immediately notify both school officials and law enforcement. Educators say the technology has saved lives. But critics warn it can criminalize children for careless words. "It has routinized law enforcement access and presence in students' lives, including in their home,' said Elizabeth Laird, a director at the Center for Democracy and Technology. Schools ratchet up vigilance for threats In a country weary of school shootings, several states have taken a harder line on threats to schools. Among them is Tennessee, which passed a 2023 zero-tolerance law requiring any threat of mass violence against a school to be reported immediately to law enforcement. The 13-year-old girl arrested in August 2023 had been texting with friends on a chat function tied to her school email at Fairview Middle School, which uses Gaggle to monitor students' accounts. (The Associated Press is withholding the girl's name to protect her privacy. The school district did not respond to a request for comment.) Taken to jail, the teen was interrogated and strip-searched, and her parents weren't allowed to talk to her until the next day, according to a lawsuit they filed against the school system. She didn't know why her parents weren't there. 'She told me afterwards, 'I thought you hated me.' That kind of haunts you,' said Mathis, the girl's mother. A court ordered eight weeks of house arrest, a psychological evaluation and 20 days at an alternative school for the girl. Gaggle's CEO, Jeff Patterson, said in an interview that the school system did not use Gaggle the way it is intended. The purpose is to find early warning signs and intervene before problems escalate to law enforcement, he said. 'I wish that was treated as a teachable moment, not a law enforcement moment,' said Patterson. Private student chats face unexpected scrutiny Students who think they are chatting privately among friends often do not realize they are under constant surveillance, said Shahar Pasch, an education lawyer in Florida. One teenage girl she represented made a joke about school shootings on a private Snapchat story. Snapchat's automated detection software picked up the comment, the company alerted the FBI, and the girl was arrested on school grounds within hours. Alexa Manganiotis, 16, said she was startled by how quickly monitoring software works. West Palm Beach's Dreyfoos School of the Arts, which she attends, last year piloted Lightspeed Alert, a surveillance program. Interviewing a teacher for her school newspaper, Alexa discovered two students once typed something threatening about that teacher on a school computer, then deleted it. Lightspeed picked it up, and 'they were taken away like five minutes later,' Alexa said. Teenagers face steeper consequences than adults for what they write online, Alexa said. 'If an adult makes a super racist joke that's threatening on their computer, they can delete it, and they wouldn't be arrested," she said. Amy Bennett, chief of staff for Lightspeed Systems, said that the software helps understaffed schools 'be proactive rather than punitive' by identifying early warning signs of bullying, self-harm, violence or abuse. The technology can also involve law enforcement in responses to mental health crises. In Florida's Polk County Schools, a district of more than 100,000 students, the school safety program received nearly 500 Gaggle alerts over four years, officers said in public Board of Education meetings. This led to 72 involuntary hospitalization cases under the Baker Act, a state law that allows authorities to require mental health evaluations for people against their will if they pose a risk to themselves or others. 'A really high number of children who experience involuntary examination remember it as a really traumatic and damaging experience — not something that helps them with their mental health care,' said Sam Boyd, an attorney with the Southern Poverty Law Center. The Polk and West Palm Beach school districts did not provide comments. An analysis shows a high rate of false alarms Information that could allow schools to assess the software's effectiveness, such as the rate of false alerts, is closely held by technology companies and unavailable publicly unless schools track the data themselves. Gaggle alerted more than 1,200 incidents to the Lawrence, Kansas, school district in a recent 10-month period. But almost two-thirds of those alerts were deemed by school officials to be non-issues — including over 200 false alarms from student homework, according to an Associated Press analysis of data received via a public records request. Students in one photography class were called to the principal's office over concerns Gaggle had detected nudity. The photos had been automatically deleted from the students' Google Drives, but students who had backups of the flagged images on their own devices showed it was a false alarm. District officials said they later adjusted the software's settings to reduce false alerts. Natasha Torkzaban, who graduated in 2024, said she was flagged for editing a friend's college essay because it had the words 'mental health.' 'I think ideally we wouldn't stick a new and shiny solution of AI on a deep-rooted issue of teenage mental health and the suicide rates in America, but that's where we're at right now,' Torkzaban said. She was among a group of student journalists and artists at Lawrence High School who filed a lawsuit against the school system last week, alleging Gaggle subjected them to unconstitutional surveillance. School officials have said they take concerns about Gaggle seriously, but also say the technology has detected dozens of imminent threats of suicide or violence. 'Sometimes you have to look at the trade for the greater good,' said Board of Education member Anne Costello in a July 2024 board meeting. Two years after their ordeal, Mathis said her daughter is doing better, although she's still 'terrified' of running into one of the school officers who arrested her. One bright spot, she said, was the compassion of the teachers at her daughter's alternative school. They took time every day to let the kids share their feelings and frustrations, without judgment. 'It's like we just want kids to be these little soldiers, and they're not,' said Mathis. 'They're just humans.' ___ This reporting reviewed school board meetings posted on YouTube, courtesy of DistrictView, a dataset created by researchers Tyler Simko, Mirya Holman and Rebecca Johnson. ___ The Associated Press' education coverage receives financial support from multiple private foundations. AP is solely responsible for all content. Find AP's standards for working with philanthropies, a list of supporters and funded coverage areas at
Daily Mirror
an hour ago
- Daily Mirror
Fire chief Peter Alt yells ‘Shut the f*** up' at distressed girl, 10
A New York Volunteer Fire Company chief has been suspended from his duties after he was caught on video using inappropriate language to a young girl in distress A disgraced fire chief has been suspended after he told a 10-year-old girl to "shut the f*** up" as she is strapped to a stretcher during an emergency call-out. North Babylon Volunteer Fire Company Chief Peter Alt was caught on video shouting at the upset child in West Babylon, New York on Monday, August 4. In a now viral video, which has been watched more than 4.5million times on TikTok, the girl was visibly upset as she was placed into an ambulance. "Shut the f*** up! Deal with you every f****** day," Alt is heard shouting at the youngster. The girl, who was strapped to a stretcher, can be heard shouting: 'I don't want to go! I want to go home!" 'Shut your mouth," the fire chief can be heard shouting back. It comes after a schoolboy, 13, has both legs amputated after 'getting cramp' at sports camp. The incident was captured on video by a concerned neighbour and Alt, a 22-year veteran with North Babylon Volunteer Fire Company, has since been stripped of his duties, the company confirmed in a statement. "We have become aware of an incident which occurred last night, August 4, 2025 between a member of the North Babylon Fire Company and a minor during an aided call wherein the member is alleged to have used inappropriate language toward the minor," North Babylon Volunteer Fire Company said in a statement "The member has been relieved of all of his duties pending a full and thorough investigation whereupon appropriate action will be taken. The fire company is presently reviewing all of its training, policies, and procedures and will determine if further training with respect to responding to emergency calls is required. 'The fire company does not condone this behaviour and deems it unacceptable.' It's been reported that the family has called first responders for the 10-year-old before, but in the past responders have always been understanding. The girl's mother slammed Alt in an interview with Newsday on Wednesday. 'He was supposed to protect her and help her, not verbally abuse her,' she said. 'He failed her. At no point should a child or human be spoken to like that ever.' The child's grandmother told NBC New York earlier this week that police were called because the girl became emotionally distressed after her phone was taken away from her. The girl has since secluded herself at home and 'didn't want to go to school", the grandmother said. 'She has anxiety. She will need therapy,' she added. A number of officers from the Suffolk County Police Department were also in attendance during the call-out and afterwards reported the incident to their supervisor, the department said in a statement obtained by Newsday. Town of Babylon officials have since released a statement on Facebook condemning the fire chief's 'appalling' actions. 'The use of demeaning and inappropriate language by a first responder during an aided call is appalling and completely at odds with the standards of dignity, respect, and professionalism our residents deserve,' the statement read. 'We understand that the individual involved has been relieved of duty while a full investigation takes place and we expect a full and transparent review of the incident.' It added: "The Town of Babylon condemns this conduct in the strongest possible terms and stands with the affected family and all residents who rely on our emergency services in their times of need."
Daily Mail
2 hours ago
- Daily Mail
Trump threatens National Guard to DC after young staffer's attack
President Trump vowed to 'federalize' Washington and send in the National Guard on Wednesday to crush violent crime in the nation's capital, citing the brutal assault of a young pro-Trump staffer known by the nickname 'Big Balls' as a breaking point. During a press conference Trump confirmed he is actively considering seizing control of DC law enforcement - a drastic step that would override local government authority and place the capital's policing under federal command. 'We're considering it because the crime is ridiculous,' Trump told reporters. 'We have a capital that's very unsafe. You know, we just almost lost a young man, beautiful, handsome guy that got the hell knocked out of him the night before last. I'm going to call him now.' The young man Trump referenced is Edward Coristine (pictured), a 19-year-old government worker affectionately dubbed 'Big Balls' by his colleagues. Coristine was violently beaten during an attempted carjacking near Dupont Circle around 3am Sunday, while defending his girlfriend from a group of teenage assailants. Two 15-year-olds have since been arrested in connection with the attack, which left Coristine hospitalized with a concussion and facial injuries. The case has quickly become the focus for Trump's broader campaign to dismantle what he calls 'Democrat chaos' in the capital. 'There's too much of it,' Trump said. 'We're going to do something about it… and that includes bringing in the National Guard - maybe very quickly.' Trump, who returned to the White House for a second term pledging to 'crush the deep state' and restore 'law and order,' has repeatedly portrayed Washington, DC, as a lawless zone of crime and dysfunction. 'We want to have a great, safe capital - and we're going to have it,' he said. 'That includes cleanliness, it includes other things… graffiti, roads that are in bad shape, medians that are falling down. We're going to beautify the city.' The remarks come just days after Trump posted an image of Coristine with blood running down his face, writing on Truth Social that D.C. crime was 'out of control' and that teenage criminals were 'randomly attacking, mugging, maiming, and shooting innocent citizens.' 'They are not afraid of law enforcement because they know nothing ever happens to them, but it's going to happen now!' Trump warned. Coristine, who became known as 'Big Balls' for his outspoken fearlessness during late-night brainstorming sessions with Trump's Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), has become an unexpected symbol of the administration's push to remake the capital. 'My friend Big Balls is a hero,' wrote close friend Marko Elez on X, sharing a photo of Coristine after the assault. 'He protected a young woman from an attempted carjacking by 8 thugs near Dupont Circle. 'Violence like this in the heart of DC is completely unacceptable,' Elez added. Even Elon Musk, under whom Coristine once worked as part of DOGE's original design team weighed in online. 'A Doge team member saw what was happening, ran to defend her and was severely beaten to the point of concussion, but he saved her,' Musk wrote. 'It is time to federalize DC.' Coristine, whose boyish face and Ivy League pedigree belied his MAGA bulldog persona, previously appeared in a Fox News segment highlighting his work to cut federal waste. But now his injuries, sustained in what police say was an attempted robbery by a group of teenagers, have made him the face of Trump's federal crime crackdown. While the Metropolitan Police Department confirmed it arrested two teens from Maryland in connection with the attack, but DC officials have been tight-lipped about further details. A spokesperson for the US Attorney's Office declined to confirm additional charges, citing an active investigation. Attorney General Brian Schwalb (pictured) addressed the outrage in a statement to The Daily Mail. 'No one who lives in, works in, or visits DC should experience this. It is horrific and disturbing… When MPD brings us cases with sufficient evidence of juveniles who have broken the law and hurt people, we will prosecute them and ensure they face consequences.' But that's not good enough for Trump, or Jeanine Pirro (pictured right), his newly appointed U.S. Attorney for the District. 'Our job is to get guns off the street, drugs off the street, and take care of those individuals that are threatening and carjacking other people,' Pirro said in a video message from the White House. 'And that's just what we're going to do. If you don't buy into it, you're going to have to deal with us.' The episode has reignited long-simmering Republican calls to strip Washington, D.C., of its autonomy, or at least curtail it dramatically. Trump allies in Congress have already proposed legislation to repeal home rule and bring the capital under full federal control. That effort is certain to face resistance from D.C. Mayor Muriel Bowser, who h as not commented publicly on Coristine's assault but has in the past fiercely defended the city's right to govern itself. While violent crime in the capital is reportedly down more than 25% from this time last year, carjackings and juvenile involvement in violent incidents remain stubbornly high. Just last year, a 14-year-old was charged with the killing of a Lyft driver in another high-profile carjacking. 'The rate of crime, the rate of muggings, killings, and everything else - we're not going to let it continue,' Trump asserted. 'You're going to be safe walking down streets. You're not going to get mugged.'
