# Are there any evil firefighters?

**URL:** <https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-there-any-evil-firefighters/98601>\
**Category:** Factual Questions\
**Created:** [March 16, 2002, 11:40am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-there-any-evil-firefighters/98601 "2002-03-16T11:40:04Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 2\
**Page:** 2

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**Author:** ![PunditLisa](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/p/4af34b/32.png) [@PunditLisa](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/PunditLisa)\
**Post date:** [March 23, 2002, 5:26pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-there-any-evil-firefighters/98601/21 "2002-03-23T17:26:32Z")

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I used to work for a small municipality here in Ohio. Personally I found that most firefighters were all right. Most of them had egoes that exceeded their talents, but that’s not really evil.

The cops, however…I don’t know if assholes are just naturally drawn to law enforcement or if being in law enforcement turned nice guys into assholes. But of all the cops that I knew, there were only 2 or 3 who didn’t carry an enormous chip on their shoulder.

My friend theorizes that it’s the way they are treated. Because most firefighters are paramedics, we are relieved and happy when they arrive on the scene. But since most of us interact with police officers only when we are getting pulled over for a traffic violation, we have a negative association with them that is then reflected back by the cop.

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**Author:** ![BobT](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/8e8cbc/32.png) [@BobT](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BobT)\
**Post date:** [March 23, 2002, 5:39pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-there-any-evil-firefighters/98601/22 "2002-03-23T17:39:14Z")

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> [@](#):
>
> \*Originally posted by Jeremy’s Evil Twin \*  
> \*\*BobT, was that the Calabasas/Malibu fire that happened in 1993? I remember hearing something about how it was set by a volunteer fireman who wanted to “prove himself a hero” or something like that, but the details were sketchy and I never heard of anyone being arrested for it. (The Altadena fire that same week was accidentally set by a homeless person. Bad year for fires, that was.) \*\*

Actually I was speaking of the case of former Glendale (CA) fire captain John Orr who was convicted on four counts of murder and 20 cases of arson.

The four people died in a fire Orr set at a hardware store in South Pasadena. Orr later then wrote an unpublished book about a fire investigator who got sexual thrills from setting fires. In the manuscript, he described a fire almost exactly like the one that happened in South Pasadena.

Orr was also convicted of some Federal arson crimes. (I never knew there were any.)

After he serves his sentence in the Federal pen, he goes off to the CA state pen for life without parole.

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