AURORA | The second in command of Aurora Fire Rescue was fired this week after independent investigators found that the deputy chief violated a bevy of department rules, including bungling time-off requests and using an ethnic slur during a job interview two years ago.
Deputy Chief Stephen McInerny was terminated March 1 after a series of internal investigations into his conduct at work found “a number of policy violations,” a spokesperson for the City of Aurora confirmed.
As first reported by CBS4, McInerny had been under scrutiny for months after claims arose that he improperly accounted his company time and took multiple trips to Florida and California without requesting time off.
Employment investigators hired by the city corroborated those allegations.
“This investigator finds it more likely than not that DC McInerny did not properly account for three days when he did not work for AFR in 2020,” Investigator David Vogel wrote in his report to the city. “ … This investigator also finds it more likely than not that DC McInerny has treated all Fridays in 2020 as flex days despite (his boss’s) decision to have him work alternate Fridays during the year.”
McInerny also came under fire in the fall after publishing a Facebook post with the photo of a U.S. Marine with the caption: “This is a what a hero looks like … unlike the whiny professional athletes that think they are special,” according to screenshots shared with The Sentinel.
Additional complaints regarding how McInerny organized shifts within the department surfaced shortly after he was hired by the city in May 2018, though subordinates felt the department’s second-ranking officer would retaliate against them if they spoke up, according to the reports released Thursday and additional materials sent to The Sentinel.
One unidentified witness told investigators that McInerny called an Indian job applicant “dot head” during a job interview in 2019.
McInerny rebutted the investigator’s findings, according to the reports.
“I like Indian people and I have worked with them extensively in the Information Technology realm and they excel in that profession,” he told investigator Emily Gordon, according to her report.
Gordon largely admonished McInerny’s defense, calling his original comments “tactless.”
“Deputy Chief McInerny is his own worst witness, responding to the allegation with weak denial and tone-deaf praise and stereotyping of Indian people while disclosing separate behavioral allegations against him as, in his view, evidence of a pattern of false allegations,” she wrote.
The person who brought forward the complaint regarding McInerny’s “dot head” comment was not identified in the report and is only referred to as “witness 1.” However, McInerny reportedly discovered the person’s identity by speeding up a video interview the person gave to CBS4 using obscured lighting and voice-masking modulation.
“Deputy Chief McInerny’s unprompted presentation of this material tends to lend credence to Witness 1’s fears of retaliation,” Gordon wrote.
McInerny was fired from the Fire-Rescue Department in Naples, Florida in 2016 after internal investigations showed he fudged damage reports, according to local reporting from the time.
McInerny repeatedly batted down those accusations, as well.
A native of Maine, McInerny began his firefighting career working for Broward County Fire Rescue in the late 1970s before serving a long stint for the Ft. Lauderdale Fire Department in south Florida, according to social media posts.
Sounds like the City did their regular fine job of selecting senior management