A former St. Paul training chief alleges in a federal lawsuit that the fire department’s top brass interfered in the safe training of firefighter recruits, which created risks for residents, businesses and fellow firefighters.
Jovan Palmieri, a St. Paul firefighter for 19 years, no longer works for the department.
He left in late 2019 because, according to his lawsuit, he spent more than three years trying to remedy the problems and he was retaliated against.
“Legally, he was deemed to be fired because the situation was so untenable that no reasonable person would continue to work there,” said attorney John Klassen, who is representing Palmieri along with attorney Andrew Muller.
St. Paul officials said Tuesday that they are limited in their response due to the pending litigation, though they emphasized that the city’s firefighters are required to pass and maintain certifications and testing that is controlled by the state.
“As a 26-year veteran of the St. Paul Fire Department, the safety of our firefighters and all those we serve has always been my top priority,” said Fire Chief Butch Inks in a statement. “The brave women and men of our department remain ready to respond to the needs of our community and provide critical life saving services for all of us when we need it most.”
LAWSUIT: RECRUITS WHO WEREN’T READY ALLOWED TO GRADUATE
Palmieri, who was a district fire chief, became the fire academy’s lead instructor in 2016 and then fire training officer/paramedic.
He observed Inks and Assistant Chief Mike Gaede “engage in multiple incidents of interference and obstruction in the proper and safe training of SPFD firefighter trainees,” according to the lawsuit filed in the U.S. District Court of Minnesota on Monday.
Palmieri “opposed and reported what he reasonably believed to be violations of national and state firefighter training standards.”
St. Paul firefighters currently go through 14 weeks of training through the department. They are required to have a paramedic or emergency medical technician certification before coming on the job. They also must earn three state certifications — two in firefighting and one for hazardous materials operations, and the testing is conducted by outside evaluators — to graduate from the St. Paul academy.
In the lawsuit, Palmieri gave the following examples of problems:
- Inks intervened on behalf of recruits in 2016 who weren’t meeting the required training standards, and they graduated over the objections of Palmieri and training staff.
- In 2018, Inks and Gaede overrode Palmieri’s recommendations about a recruit who panicked in live fire exercises and could not hold a “standard attack fire hose line while it was flowing with water.”
- “In a number of instances, the recruits on whose behalves Inks intervened had personal connections to this high-ranking fire officer.”
- Beginning in January 2018 and continuing through October 2019, Inks and Gaede “intentionally degraded fire training by short-staffing the training division and academy staff.”
- By June 2019, Palmieri was the only staff officer left in the fire training division. The ratio of one training staff to 45 firefighters was “an unacceptable and unprecedentedly high ratio.”
- For most of Palmieri’s time in the training division, he had to do the work of two to three training officers, “which was grossly inadequate given the fact that the SPFD had 450 firefighters and support personnel that needed to be kept compliant and up to date in their training.”
The fire department’s training division includes a deputy chief, two fire training officers and a training administrative assistant, according to Peter Leggett, Mayor Melvin Carter’s communications director.
During fire academies, about 40 St. Paul firefighters bolster the training division by serving as adjunct instructors with expertise in auto extrication, firefighter safety and survival, ice rescue, high-rise operations, rope rescue, structural collapse and other specialized training.
There are also nine rescue squad captains who provide on-duty hazardous material and technical rescue training, three on-duty emergency medical services coordinators, along with contracted staff from Regions EMS, Leggett said.
HE WARNED THEY WERE ‘LUCKY NO ONE HAS BEEN SERIOUSLY HURT’
Palmieri said in his lawsuit that he talked to Gaede last July regarding approximately half of St. Paul firefighters having a lack of high-rise fire training — with some not receiving such training for three years — due to the lack of training staff. He also explained hazardous materials teams were behind on training.
Palmieri told Gaede: “We are going to have a line of duty death if we continue this way. We are extremely lucky no one has been seriously hurt so far,” the lawsuit said.
Meanwhile, “Gaede told him he had crossed the line and mocked him, saying, ‘Oh, someone’s going to die,’ ” according to the lawsuit. “Gaede told (Palmieri) he was getting frustrated by (him) repeatedly bringing up the word ‘dangerous’ and by talking about safety concerns.”
Last September, Palmieri submitted a detailed report to the city that outlined his concerns about improper staffing levels in the training division to adequately prepare firefighters, but it “was dismissed” with “no corrective … action,” according to the lawsuit.
Klassen said Tuesday that Palmieri is not alone in “sharing these concerns.”
RETALIATION CLAIMS
In response to Palmieri’s “repeated reports of and opposition to inadequate and dangerous training conditions and the graduating of poorly performing recruits,” he was repeatedly retaliated against from 2016 to 2019, the lawsuit claims, including being told he and his staff were on a “muzzle order” and couldn’t express their concerns, being threatened with investigations and being cut out of decision making for the training division.
Last August, when Palmieri was invited to a command officer meeting, Inks announced he was cutting a position in the training division — Palmieri’s — which “was intended to humiliate him,” the lawsuit said.
A job for deputy chief of training was posted, for which Palmieri applied. He was told in November he didn’t get the position. The person who did was “substantially less qualified” than him, he said in his lawsuit.
Palmieri left and became the Brooklyn Park Fire Department’s deputy chief of professional standards.
His lawsuit claims violations of his First Amendment right to speak on matters of public concern and the Minnesota Whistleblower Act, along with discrimination under the Minnesota Occupational Health and Safety Act. The suit seeks damages in excess of $75,000.
