Kansas City files to have arbitrator’s decision, sending firefighter back to work, thrown out
KANSAS CITY, Mo. — Court documents revealed new details about the discipline for a Kansas City firefighter involved in a crash that killed three people and the city’s fight to keep him from returning to the job.
Local 42, the union representing Kansas City firefighters, filed a grievance in 2023 when the city’s fire chief said through a statement to the media Dominic Biscari would be suspended without pay and they’d start the process to fire him. That followed a plea agreement to involuntary manslaughter charges stemming from the 2021 crash at Westport and Broadway.
The case between the city and the union went to an arbitrator, but now the city and people close to the three victims are not happy with the decision.
Video showed Biscari with lights and sirens he speed through a red light after being taken off a call colliding with a vehicle in the intersection, several parked cars and a pedestrian before slamming into a building causing its collapse. As horrifying as that video was, friends of the victim equally disturbed by some of the new revelations Wednesday.
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At a protest Monday, friends and former co-workers of two of the three victims from a deadly crash involving a pumper truck had signs that said it all. But reading details of exactly how Dominic Biscari got his job back today left some speechless.
“It’s worse than I had thought, that one paragraph you kind of lose your breath,” Ragazza owner Laura Norris said after reading the court documents.
In a motion to vacate an arbitrator’s ruling, an attorney for Kansas City said it was overreach to change Biscari’s suspension without pay until court matters could be adjudicated to just a three-day suspension.
According to the petition it amounted to one day for each death and one day for each million dollars the fatal accident cost the city in lawsuits.
“We could have lost so many more lives. Would have that made a bigger difference would have that effected change. That is ultimately where my biggest question and frustration is,” Jessica Ames, a friend of victim Michael Elwood said.
Biscari entered an Alford Plea not admitting guilt in a plea agreement to the three counts of involuntary manslaughter and was given probation.
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While the city says the arbitrator was only supposed to determine whether the suspension without pay was done with due process and just cause, the arbitrator also ruled references to the fatal accident should be removed from Biscari’s personnel file.
“When we were doing the protest on Monday one of the things that we really wanted was some assurance that he’d never drive again. If there’s nothing in his record what’s going to make him?” Norris wondered.
“The 40 hours of community service was already a slap in the face. For them to take it back and essentially wipe out that this even happen -that says to me that my friend’s life, it’s like he never lived, he never mattered. That is not okay with me, it’s like a knife to the heart,” Ames said.
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The ruling also said Kansas City should pay the union’s court costs in its fight to help Biscari keep his job. The City wants the whole ruling thrown out, but says at minimum that reduced suspension, the redactions in the personnel file and the court costs sections should be eliminated.
