A New York fire captain retired after he was accused of pressuring a Black firefighter to attend a party that mocked Juneteenth with racist imagery, the city’s mayor announced Tuesday.
Rochester fire Capt. Jeffrey Krywy made the deicision “before termination proceedings” could begin following an investigation by the city into his alleged misconduct, Mayor Malik Evans said in a statement.
Krywy chose to retire after being presented with the “determination of the investigation, requiring him to leave the service,” the mayor said.
The firefighter, Jerrod Jones, last week filed a notice of claim signaling his intent to file a lawsuit against the city of Rochester and the Rochester Fire Department over the incident.
In the filing, Jones, a 14-year veteran with the fire department, alleged that Krywy had pressured him and two other firefighters to attend a private party with racist and misogynistic imagery.
He said he had initially felt uneasy as he arrived to the party and noticed a large cut out of former President Donald Trump, as it was against department rules to attend partisan political events, the filing said.
It said Jones “became completely shocked,” however, when he noticed there were two large Juneteenth celebration flags decorating the lawn with buckets of Kentucky Fried Chicken prominently displayed in “an apparent use of the racist trope recycled by bigots to mock Black Americans.”
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The filing said someone at the party also appeared to have been impersonating Monroe County legislator Rachel Barnhart and acting in a sexual manner as the crowd taunted her. Jones could further see “pictures of local democratic politicians on stakes across the grass around the backyard,” according to the filing.
Jones said he had raised the issue with a superior following the incident and asked that they address it, the filing said. He was shocked, however, when he was assigned to work with the same captain for his next shift four days after raising the issue, prompting him to pursue further action.
Nate McMurray, Jones’ attorney, questioned the decision to allow Krywy to retire, telling NBC News in a phone interview on Wednesday: “I don’t know, if you don’t get terminated for what he did what do you get terminated for?”
“I just don’t think they’re treating this with the level of urgency that it deserves,” he said.
McMurray had also questioned in a tweet Tuesday the likelihood that Krywy would be eligible for a “full pension” after retiring.
“Further, the Mayor says they’ve done an investigation. In other words, ‘All good,’ ” he said.
“But it’s not all good,” McMurray said, alleging that the mayor had had not yet called Jones.
“There are no concrete changes to guarantee it can never happen again,” he said. “And my client remains at risk, subject to threats and a hostile workplace, just years away from his own well-earned pension.”
Speaking at a news conference outside Rochester’s City Hall last Thursday, Jones said the experience had “cut me very deeply.”
He said he decided to “speak up” about the incident “because I have two children who maybe one day will aspire to be firefighters, and I don’t want them … I don’t want them to have to experience what I experienced.”
Jones remains on leave following the incident due to emotional distress and fear of retaliation, McMurray said.
In his statement, Evans said that “the underlying issues that bring us to today were not created in the last eight months,” as he thanked Rochester Fire Department Chief Felipe Hernandez “for his continued commitment to addressing the structural biases and cultural challenges within the RFD.”
He said the city would continue to “share regular updates” on its efforts to “tackle these longstanding issues in the weeks to come.”
Source: | This article originally belongs to Nbcnews.com
