Editor's note: Later in the week, Chief Tim Butler was reprimanded for retaliating against an employee who filed a complaint against him in an earlier complaint.
The head of the St. Paul firefighters union has filed a workplace conduct complaint against the city's fire chief, alleging he used a derogatory term in an email exchange with a firefighter last week.
The Twin Cities Pioneer Press reports that the term firefighters are upset about -- "blue falcon" -- appeared in the subject line of an email Butler sent to firefighter David Alfred. The term is typically used as military slang for someone whose actions harm or heap blame on comrades, often to their own benefit.
Chief Butler, a retired member of the U.S. Coast Guard and Reserves, told the Pioneer Press on Monday that his use of the term was "unprofessional and uncalled for" and came when he was feeling frustrated.
"For that, I'm sorry," the chief said.
Butler's email to Alfred came after the firefighter posted comments on Facebook notifying residents about department plans to cut a fire engine from their district and have a medical unit replace it.
"(Chief Butler is) going to give you a song and dance on how your service will improve, but the fact is, medic rigs don't put out fires," Alfred wrote.
The post upset the chief because he says it did not tell the whole story, and he felt it was a personal attack on him and the department's labor-management committee, which the chief says has been working to find alternatives to cutting a specialty rescue squad.
"When you tell the public your feelings about things, make sure you tell them that the fire chief has recommended -- on more than 25 occasions -- alternatives and investments that are needed for our department," Butler said. "Have them call the mayor and the city council. They make citywide budget priority decisions. The fire chief does not."
Alfred, a 16-year department veteran assigned to Engine 7, said he posted his comments because he wants people in affected neighborhoods to know what's happening with service changes.
"I've talked to guys in the military and asked if it's acceptable for a superior officer to call a subordinate a 'blue falcon' and they said, absolutely not," union president Mike Smith said. "I'm asking the city to take it seriously and treat him like anyone else -- you're the department head, you're supposed to enforce these policies, not break them or violate them."
The tension between IAFF Local 21 and Butler dates back at least a year when the union voted to censure the chief because he had "adopted a hostile and aggressive tone when dealing with" the union.
Butler insists he did not call Alfred "a blue falcon or any other derogatory term," saying the email's subject line merely referred to the firefighter's actions.
"I yielded to a normal human frustration," the chief said. "If I'm reprimanded for that, I will be responsible with that reprimand. If I'm suspended for that, I will be responsible and serve that reprimand because it was a term that shouldn't have been used and it was an action I shouldn't have taken."
