"McGrath asks why the firefighters weren't brought in on the decisionmaking about the number of NYFD personnel on site at Ground Zero. I don't know; perhaps legally they didn't have to be." What "legal" got to do with it for Christ's sake?

It would indeed have been "more sensitive" to ask their advice and take it too.But I'd put it rather it would have been less crassly insensitive if they'd done that.

Twenty three police officers were killed in the Towers. That was awful. But 343 firefighters died there. No, numbers aren't that important in themselves. One death is enough and too many. But it's hardly surprising that the focus should be on that army of dead firefighters. Day in day out tales about the police fill the TV. Just for once the focus is on the people who risk their lives every day to fight fires, because on one terrible day 343 of them died trying to save other people - and now there are complaints about how they are hogging the attention.

"I can't imagine how it must affect the NYC police officers when they see this, particularly when the mayor of the city wears his NYFD hat for photo ops." I think I know how I'd feel. It'd make me proud, because they'd be my comrades, part of the same family. Very often quite literally so.