The District’s police and fire unions are asking the city’s top investigator to launch an investigation into what they say is the destruction of personnel files, The Washington Examiner has learned.
In a letter to D.C. Inspector General Charles Willoughby obtained by The Examiner, the union chiefs detail an incident on Friday in which fire engines were dispatched to a fire training academy for a report of a trash bin fire. There, firefighters found three of the containers full of burning documents.
“There were also numerous documents on the ground around the Dumpsters, in an abandon[ed] car, and strewn throughouth the training academy grounds by wind,” the letter says. “After FEMS personnel began putting water on the fires, they realized that at least a portion of the documents were personnel files for employees of the Metropolitan Police Department and the FEMS.”
A fire department spokesman said the matter “is currently under investigation.”
The documents, not all of which were successfully destroyed, contained private information such as medical records and Social Security numbers, the letter says.
The unions are asking Willoughby to investigate the incident on the grounds that the files may have been improperly handled, possibly violating personnel privacy. The letter also notes the fire could have destroyed “potential evidence.”
Request for Investigation – Document Destruction 2012 OIG
