April 3, 2006 -- Mayor Bloomberg apologized to the widow of an FDNY battalion chief yesterday for not notifying her that a tape of her husband's last words to a 911 operator existed and that the city was releasing it to the public last week.
Bloomberg apologized to Kathleen Devlin, who said she had no idea that the 32-second recording of her husband, Battalion Chief Dennis Devlin, existed. "Unfortunately, when you're trying to do lots of things, sometimes things slip through the crack and that's unfortunate," he said during a Manhattan press conference yesterday. "I apologize . . . I'm sorry if there's any pain."
Bloomberg said that Fire Commissioner Nicholas Scoppetta called Devlin to apologize directly.
"I think this is the only case where we probably did not notify the widow in advance," he said. "We never thought that these tapes should be out there because it creates pain," Bloomberg said. "Nothing that the rest of us can do is ever going to bring back any of these people."
