Following a massive protest in which five police officers were injured when firefighters came up against police barricades, the presidents of both the Uniformed Firefighters Association and the Uniformed Fire Officers Association have been charged with trespassing on the World Trade Center disaster site. The presidents of the UFA and UFOA, as well as the presidents of the EMS workers and fire dispatchers unions, have condemned this latest turn of events in the growing fight over Mayor Giuliani's decision to severely limit the number of firefighters and police officers at the disaster site as a political move aimed at weakening opposition to the planned changes. The mayor and the NYC fire commissioner have defended these changes, pointing out that they are necessary to keep fire and police services at safe levels in the city, and to protect rescue workers from the heavy equipment increasingly being used in what is now a cleanup effort.
See "Second Union Leader Is Charged With Trespassing in Demonstration at Ground Zero", ROBERT D. McFADDEN, The New York Times, November 4, 2001