Deputy fire marshal fired over alleged false reports
STAMFORD — A deputy fire marshal and former longtime president of the city’s firefighter association has been terminated for “systematically creating false reports” about the time he spent inspecting buildings.
During an investigation that used his daily logs and a GSP tracker, Brendan Keatley showed “a pattern of false reporting” during routine building inspections, according to a termination letter obtained by Hearst Connecticut Media.
“This cannot be dismissed as negligent recordkeeping. The creation of false reports is a serious violation of your duties and the obligations of your office to the general public which you serve,” wrote Fire Chief Trevor Roach.
However, Stamford Professional Fire Fighters Association Local 786 President Paul Anderson said the department and city leadership had ulterior motives in the firing.
“It stinks a little bit of politics,” he said.
Keatley, a 26-year veteran of the Stamford Fire Department, was fired on Aug. 26.
In his termination letter, Roach said Keatley, who has been on administrative leave since April 5, intentionally lied about the time he had spent on routine building inspections in reports each of the department’s fire marshals are required to fill out daily.
Though the letter does not specify the number of alleged instances of record
falsification discovered by a department review of Keatley’s reports, it says the investigation uncovered a “pattern of false reporting.”
The department’s investigation into Keatley began in February after he allegedly attended a 911 training session without alerting his superiors, and then later reported he was conducting an inspection during the same time period he was in the training.
The investigation looked at the prior four months of Keatley’s daily reports — reports which all fire marshals are required to do — and then checked the reports against the GPS records of his car.
In one instance, Roach writes, Keatley reported spending an hour on Dec. 15 inspecting an affordable housing complex on Stillwater Avenue with 88 units. A review of GPS records, however, showed Keatley was only on scene there for 29 minutes, the letter said.
The letter goes on to claim Keatley then used the time he “carved out” for himself to focus on “personal matters” and errands.
“Your failure to faithfully discharge your duties places the City’s ability to safeguard its community at risk. In the event of a catastrophic occurrence, the City will be unable to rely on your reports and will likewise be handicapped in its efforts to prevent further incidents because your inspection reports are purposely deceptive and therefore unreliable. These risks are unacceptable to the City,” Roach wrote in the letter.
Keatley said in a statement Wednesday that he “proudly” served Stamford for over 25 years before his “involuntary separation” from the department late last month.
“The fire service is one of the pillars of the Stamford community and I always endeavored to provide quality service to the residents that I was sworn to serve and protect,” he said in the statement.
While Keatley did not address the allegations made in the termination letter, the Stamford Professional Fire Fighters Fighters Association Local 786 has since filed a grievance on his behalf.
While the city reports the firing was motivated by his job performance, Anderson said Keatley isn’t the only one in the department’s fire marshal division who engaged in such reporting.
“This is the practice for every single one of them across the division,” he said.
Anderson said that the fire marshals are expected to schedule inspections on their calendars, with timeblocks stretching from 30 minutes to an hour, depending on the size of the structure they are inspecting.
Some inspections go quicker than others, others go longer, Anderson said. For reporting purposes, the fire marshals then look back at those scheduled visits and copy those scheduled times straight back into the firehouse reporting software, regardless of the time actually spent at the visit, according to Anderson.
“When you have a problem with a whole division, do you go after one individual or do you try to fix the problem? If record-keeping is as important as they say it is, and it is such an egregious violation, then what are you going to do about the last five years of bad reporting?” he said.
Anderson said the firing was never about recordkeeping. He contends Keatley was really fired because of a “very toxic relationship” with Roach based, in part on Keatley’s opposition to a city policy that allows Roach, among others, to collect a pension while drawing a city salary.
This dispute over pensions — and a potential lawsuit from the union looming if the issue isn’t resolved — has tensions rising inside the department, Anderson said.
And Anderson said he believes it was this dispute over the department administrators’ pensions that motivated Keatley’s firing, not matters of faulty record-keeping.
Roach responded to Anderson’s accusations early Thursday morning, saying that he “stands by” what he wrote in Keatley’s termination letter.
“I am so proud of the Stamford Fire Department and the work we all do. It is extremely disappointing when events like this occur, because 95 percent of the people who work here do fantastic work,” Roach said.
Director of Public Safety, Health and Welfare Ted Jankowski, who oversees the police and fire departments, said Mayor David Martin’s administration “stands behind the decision to terminate” Keatley.
Jankowski said he was “very disappointed” when he learned of the allegations.
“Such conduct is dangerous and harmful to the city’s residents,” Jankowski said. “The Stamford Fire Department is overwhelmingly made up of dedicated firefighters and fire marshals who perform their duties to the public honestly and with integrity. However, we will not tolerate falsifying inspection reports to the detriment of the safety of the public and our first responders and getting paid for work that is not being done.”
Anderson said the grievance filed over Keatley’s firing will likely head to arbitration in about six to eight months. He said he is “optimistic” Keatley will be reinstated in the end.
“Brendan gave his whole life to this place — he doesn’t deserve this,” Anderson said.