Firehouse was party place in '03

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The firehouse smelled like a bar.

And in a tape-recorded interview with a Fire Department internal affairs investigator in January 2003, one firefighter said the smell was just one sign that something was wrong at a southwest Omaha fire station.

Some firefighters were out of uniform all evening. Women wandered through the station's halls after hours.

"More of a partylike atmosphere," the firefighter told the investigator. "Not necessarily what we find in most engine houses."

"It just didn't seem like, um, I don't know, a professional group of guys ready to go on calls at all times."

The interview was conducted during a probe of allegations that one shift of firefighters at Station 56 regularly consumed alcohol and broke other department rules while on duty. The allegations included claims that, at times, some firefighters were too intoxicated to do their jobs.

Five men assigned to the station near 168th and Pacific Streets eventually "confessed to unbecoming activities" that were not specified in documents examined by The World-Herald. No one was fired.

The incidents were never publicly disclosed by the Fire Department. The World-Herald obtained a portion of the internal investigation, including transcripts of 16 interviews.

The Station 56 incident also is slated to be discussed Monday by a group of Omahans who want the city to restore the public safety auditor position, which has been vacant since 2006. The activists say there should be independent investigations of alleged misconduct such as the Police Department's forceful, videotaped arrest of an Omaha man in May.

Little or no discipline occurred in the Station 56 case, they claim, and nothing was done to ensure accountability in the Fire Department.

In an interview this week, then-interim Fire Chief Joe Napravnik recalled that he was shocked by the reported misconduct at Station 56.

"I wish I could have fired them," Napravnik told The World-Herald.

But Napravnik said he wound up giving the five men what amounted to "a slap on the wrist" because he lacked evidence that would have stood up in court. He said lawyers would have picked away at hearsay testimony, inconclusive facts and the possible motives of witnesses who may have had grudges against their colleagues.

Napravnik said he settled on a "plea bargain" that forced the implicated firefighters to admit wrongdoing, imposed some form of discipline and ended the issue without publicly embarrassing the department. The five were transferred to other stations "to bust up the clique," he said.

Napravnik retired several months after the investigation concluded. He and other city officials — including current Fire Chief Mike McDonnell, who served as head of the city's fire union at the time — called the investigation an isolated problem that didn't reflect on a wider mind-set or culture within the department.

As a result of the Station 56 investigation, no rules were changed to stiffen punishment for on-duty drinking. Just as in 2003, a firefighter caught drinking on the job can be fired but does not face automatic dismissal.

City officials declined to tell The World-Herald either what the implicated firefighters admitted or how they were disciplined.

No incidents of on-the-job drinking have been reported at the Fire Department since the 2003 investigation, McDonnell and other city officials said, and no one in the department has been fired for such offenses since then.

Some of the allegations outlined in the probe were publicly mentioned during the 2009 controversy of former fire union president Darren Bates, who was fired after he was accused of lying to city officials during their investigation of his involvement in a prostitution sting.

McDonnell said the files' recent disclosure appears to be a tactic designed to influence negotiations on a new fire labor contract. The City Council last month rejected a proposed contract and plans to renegotiate with the fire union.

McDonnell said the 2003 investigation should have nothing to do with the contract negotiations.

Discussing the activities at Station 56 eight years later casts "innuendos in the sea of imagination," McDonnell said. "It was an isolated incident. An extremely isolated incident."

During the 2003 investigation, not all of the firefighters interviewed said they personally observed alcohol consumption. Some reported hearing rumors or repeated suspicions about certain firefighters.

Others saw trash bags filled with discarded alcohol containers, beers in the firehouse refrigerator or large bottles of hard liquor in storage lockers.

Collectively, however, the witnesses painted a picture of Party Central — a boozy station house where firefighters were occasionally too drunk to do their jobs.

The alleged misconduct took place over a number of years. But while a number of firefighters saw evidence of drinking or other violations during that period — and said those actions offended them — few of those concerns were reported to fire management until the 2003 probe began.

Napravnik and other city officials said that made it harder to discipline those involved. Without timely reports, they said, it was more difficult to prove that someone was drinking at a particular time or under the influence when responding to a specific emergency call.

The investigator interviewed fire employees who'd worked at the southwest Omaha fire station from 2001 to 2003.

Among their accounts:

» The firefighters involved sometimes juggled driving assignments to ensure they had a designated driver, a sober person to drive the truck to emergencies.

» Four firefighters who responded to an injured person who had fallen in a restaurant were "absolutely no help" with loading the patient onto a stretcher because they were visibly intoxicated, said one of the firefighters at the scene.

"(If) I knew I would have had to be on their rig, I would have refused," said one of the interviewed firefighters, who was once assigned to a different vehicle at the station. "There was no way I would have served on their rig."

» Besides the drinking, female visitors were regular after-hours guests at the station, witnesses said.

Female visitors reportedly disappeared with firefighters into firehouse bathrooms for up to a half-hour, would sunbathe on the firehouse patio or stay late into the night. One firefighter alleged he was shown a racy Polaroid of women, semi-clothed and wearing some firefighter gear, "to display the good time they have on the 'A' shift."

» To conceal alcohol consumption, firefighters wrapped a covering around beer cans to make them look like soda cans.

Another witness who was temporarily assigned to the station was offered an explanation for the alcohol: "I was told when I got on shift, 'don't worry about the beer' that was in the icebox, it was there for cooking purposes only."

A few firefighters didn't bother trying to conceal their drinking, according to witness accounts.

"There was beer in the fridge in the kitchen, beer in the fridge on the apparatus floor, down in the drawers, and there was hard liquor in the back cabinet," a firefighter told investigators. "They would get up, go to that back cabinet, get in there, mix their drink, and then come back to the table with a full cup."

Some of those interviewed said it was widely rumored what was going on at Station 56.

Fire administrators halted the investigation one month after it began when two fire captains and three firefighters admitted to unspecified violations at Station 56, the report said.

None were fired. One was eventually promoted to battalion chief.

Four of the firefighters have since retired and receive annual pensions ranging from $58,144 to $87,323. The fifth is still employed by the Fire Department.

The World-Herald made several attempts to contact those involved. One of the disciplined firefighters refused to comment. Another said he was not involved in any misconduct but was disciplined because he served on the same shift. He said he was urged by McDonnell, his union president at the time, to accept punishment in order to resolve the overall issue. The other three could not be reached.

Paul Landow, who was chief of staff to then-Mayor Mike Fahey, said his recollection of the investigation is hazy. After all, he said, it concluded eight years ago.

"We thought at the time it was isolated. That there was very little evidence. That a lot of it was hearsay," he said. "A lot of the people talking had vendettas and grudges against the people that they were making allegations about.

"Needless to say, if we had believed that public safety was being jeopardized, it would've been handled much differently than it was," Landow said. "But we were never convinced that was the case."

Some of the more serious allegations were not based on eyewitness accounts.

In one case, intoxicated firefighters whose truck was nearly out of water stomped out a grass fire near suburban homes, rather than call for backup and bring a supervisor to the scene. But the firefighter who recounted the incident was not present.

Another allegation involved two firefighters who were too drunk to help when they responded to the fatal October 2001 crash of a Seward school bus into the West Papio Creek near Omaha. But the firefighter who made the allegation had only heard of the incident.

Napravnik said he had no evidence that firefighters were too drunk to work at the Seward bus crash. He said he was at the scene as a battalion chief and didn't see any incapacitated firefighters, and no reports or accusations of misconduct surfaced in the department's extensive post-crash debriefings.

Given the serious nature of such allegations, Napravnik said, it was disappointing that no one had reported them sooner.

An intoxicated firefighter would be a threat to public safety and would put colleagues' lives at risk, Napravnik said. And it would reflect poorly on everyone else in the department.

"All we have is our integrity," he said.

Such misconduct is a rarity among modern firefighters, Napravnik said. When he joined the force in 1972, he recalled, there were times when he saw some firefighters have a beer at a station. But those incidents disappeared, he said, as firefighters became increasingly professional, more educated and better trained.

Under the city's drug and alcohol policy, city employees are prohibited from reporting to work while impaired by alcohol. They also cannot use, possess or sell alcohol while on duty.

Drinking on the job, Chief McDonnell said, can be a fireable offense. "It is and it always has been," he said.

Whether that option is exercised, though, is up to the city department head overseeing that employee. Violations can also be punishable by a reprimand, suspension or demotion.

Assistant City Attorney Bernard in den Bosch said the city's drug and alcohol policy also allows for other options to address substance abuse issues, including treatment.

"In many circumstances we're going to opt towards treatment and trying to address the problem as opposed to immediate termination," he said. An employee's level of cooperation and candor during interviews, as well as past service record, also plays a role in how a case is handled, he said.

McDonnell said the city's policies have proven sufficient to deal with any potential problems with on-the-job drinking.

"The policies that were in place remain in place," McDonnell said. "And I believe those policies have been tested as we've had zero incidents since."

Steve LeClair, current fire union president, said fire officials discovered and resolved the Station 56 case on their own, without public pressure, years ago.

"This was a self-policed, isolated incident," he said, "that was investigated, discipline handed down, not appealed — and concluded."

However, in den Bosch acknowledged the 2003 investigation probably led to a heightened awareness among fire administrators of the need to immediately act on any suspected on-the-job drinking.

The city is comfortable with fire officials' oversight of the department, in den Bosch said. The department's battalion chiefs and captains closely supervise subordinates, he said, and the public also can observe and report any complaints about firefighters.

"We don't have a person whose job it is to go from fire station to fire station every day smelling people's breath or opening lockers or anything like that," in den Bosch said.

"We've got a professionally trained fire department ... they're one of the best fire departments in the country," he said. "To some extent, we have to rely on their professionalism."

Contact the writer:

402-444-1068, johnny.perez@owh.com

twitter.com/PerezJr

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