FORT LAUDERDALE -- A Fire Rescue Department battalion chief who got into an altercation with a bouncer at a strip club when he was refused admittance for acting drunk and unruly is being demoted several ranks to firefighter at the end of the month.
City Manager Alan Silva delayed his decision for months because he was not satisfied with the original fire-rescue department investigation or Fire Chief Otis Latin's recommendation that the employee, James Heller, receive only a five-day suspension and have his city vehicle taken away.
When John Dargis, the city's assistant employee relations director, looked at the same information, he told the city manager that Heller should be fired. Faced with such contradictory recommendations, Silva asked another city department -- the Office of Professional Standards -- to conduct a separate investigation.
The results of that investigation were damning for both Heller, who has called in sick every day since shortly after the incident, and the fire-rescue department. OPS Investigator James Crown and his supervisor concluded in a Dec. 31 report that alcohol contributed to the actions of Heller, 46, that night, that he attacked the bouncer, that he later lied to his superiors about it and that he made wild, unsubstantiated allegations to make almost everyone else involved in the case look bad -- even the Broward Sheriff's Office deputy who investigated.
A Jan. 26 memo written by OPS Director Stephen Scott pointed out that the fire chief said Heller "accepted full responsibility" for his actions, but, "in reality he is accepting responsibility [only] for the `poor choice' of going to `Tusk Steakhouse' (as opposed to Pure Platinum) in his city vehicle. Otherwise, he actually denied any inappropriate conduct."
Scott also told the city manager that the fire-rescue department failed to interview the Pure Platinum witnesses, ask the firefighters and police officers on the scene if they thought Heller was intoxicated, inspect Heller's vehicle for signs of alcohol consumption, or visit the strip club to get an idea of where the incident occurred.
Also, when Latin recommended the five-day suspension, he did not mention that Heller had violated a city policy prohibiting possession or consumption of intoxicating beverages while operating or using a city-owned vehicle, even though Heller admitted to drinking about two beers that night, according to Scott's memo.
Scott said he thought that charge should be added. The city manager agreed.
"I stand by what we did from the standpoint of an investigation," Latin said. "You can always do more. We had no reason or rationale to do more than we did."
"The city manager has the right to review anything we do, and he did. He has a right to make a recommendation above what my recommendation was," Latin said. "All that took place."
According to city records: Heller's nightmare began on Oct. 2, when he parked his city-owned Chevrolet Impala in a valet spot outside the Pure Platinum strip club, now known as Spearmint Rhino, on Federal Highway a few blocks north of Oakland Park Boulevard.
Heller, who is married with children, told his superiors that he made a "poor split-second decision" to stop not at the strip club, but at Tusk Steakhouse, a restaurant in the same building. It was approaching midnight, and Heller was headed home to Loxahatchee after a work-related meeting at Caf
