A woman has made allegations of having sex with a veteran Chicago firefighter at one of the Windy City's fire stations, a claim that has triggered an internal investigation.
The Chicago Sun-Times reports that the woman claims she engaged in sexual activity at a station on the city's South Side with a firefighter whom other sources say was her boyfriend at the time.
"The Chicago Fire Department has an ongoing investigation into these allegations and will determine if they are true," department spokesman Larry Langford wrote in an email to the Sun-Times. "Such conduct will not be tolerated in our firehouses and any member guilty of such an event will face appropriate discipline."
Langford did not identify the firefighter, the woman who made the claims nor the fire station where the activity allegedly occurred and how often it did. The investigation has reportedly been ongoing for months as the department tries to verify the claims through personal interviews and phone records.
Sexual activity in fire stations is strictly forbidden as a department policy, but despite those rules, this is not the first time Chicago has faced claims of firefighters engaging in such activity in stations. In 2000, according to the Sun-Times, a 27-year-old prostitute arrested for burglary claimed she performed oral sex on as many as five firefighters a night at several Chicago firehouses over a span of 11 years.
Also, in 2004, the Chicago Fire Department cut off Internet access for 59 firehouse computers and ordered dozens of firefighters to undergo counseling after determining that a computer at an O'Hare Airport station was used over a nine-month period to visit "inappropriate sites," possibly including pornography.
Strict rules against sex in fire stations are in place for most fire departments across the country, but they are not always heeded. Allegations of rampant sex in Las Vegas stations and a systematic effort to cover it up have been made in recent months.
