A Boston firefighter who was terminated after allegedly using the “n-word” against a black colleague has lost his appeal for reinstatement.
Gregory LaVallee, a 14-year veteran of the Boston Fire Department who served eight years in the Navy, lost his job in March after a December 2018 incident in which the then-39-year-old allegedly entered the North End fire station on Hanover Street drunk while off duty and swore at an on-duty black firefighter using the racial epithet, documents show.
The Civil Service Commission on Dec. 5 voted to uphold LaVallee’s termination, with Chairman Christopher Bowman calling LaVallee’s word choice “repugnant” and the circumstances of the case “particularly ugly.”
“By entering the firehouse in a drunken state and using the n-word while spitting on the floor, Mr. LaVallee engaged in substantial (and abhorrent) misconduct which adversely affects the public interest and constitutes a violation of various rules and regulations of the BFD, including conduct unbecoming a firefighter,” Bowman wrote.
Bowman also cited LaVallee’s suspension for a similar incident in 2011, in which he made an “inappropriate racial comment” to two black firefighters while off duty that included the same word.
LaVallee and his attorneys could not immediately be reached for comment. The Boston Fire Department did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
LaVallee was “stumbling and smelling strongly of alcohol” when he first entered the firehouse’s television room shortly after midnight on Dec. 13, 2018, and offered Chinese food to the black firefighter who was playing a video game and chatting with his girlfriend through a gaming headset.
When LaVallee returned, both the black firefighter and his girlfriend, through the headset, allegedly heard LaVallee swear at him using the derogatory term and “clear his throat as if to spit,” the commission’s report says.
The firefighter, a 12-year department veteran who also works as a nurse at several local hospitals and was previously an Army Reservist, immediately informed his superiors, who removed LaVallee from the room.
The next day, LaVallee denied using the word, said he had been drinking and had just lost a close friend, and later apologized to the firefighter, who asked his superiors to transfer LaVallee.
LaVallee took a month’s leave to seek medical treatment. Upon his return he was placed on paid administrative leave pending a fire department investigation. LaVallee told investigators he “could not remember entering the firehouse that morning” and did not remember using the word in question, the report says.
Bowman said he was “not unsympathetic” to LaVallee’s “challenges with alcoholism,” for which he has sought treatment and claimed “was the cause of his behavior” that day — but ultimately denied the appeal.
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