Ousted Chief in Ugly Firefighter Scandal Accuses Mayor of Shameless Cover-Up

Resign or get fired.

Those were the two options former Flint, Michigan, Fire Chief Raymond Barton says he was offered when called into the office of Mayor Sheldon Neeley on Thursday.

“I said, ‘Well, you’re going to have to fire me, because I’m not letting you off that easy. I’m not resigning,’” Barton recalled in an interview with The Daily Beast.

The fire chief was speaking out amid a political firestorm that began with the death of two Black boys in a house fire in May and got messy when Barton accused two white firefighters of lying about their actions that day. Things spiraled further when local politicians and the family of the boys alleged a cover-up by an incumbent Democrat desperate to win re-election, which Neeley did last week.

Now, Barton says, Neeley has retaliated against him for launching a scandal—and speaking the truth.

“Unfortunately, my mayor is that type of person,”Barton said. “I got fired because I wouldn’t lie.”

Specifically, Barton was referring to his own determination that the two firefighters in question—Michael Sniegocki and Daniel Zlotek—lied about their canvass of the house that day, only for their colleagues to discover the boys several potentially crucial minutes later.

Barton claimed at a city council meeting last month that his plan to fire the two men was overridden by the powers-that-be, though he did not single out the mayor at the time.

By Friday, he was ready to do so.

“He changed my decision. And I said, ‘If you wouldn’t have changed my decision, the only person that would have been standing in the court of law or before council was me.’”

Dad of Black Boys Left by White Firefighters Says Cops Took His Blood

In an early morning in May, 12-year-old Zy’Aire Mitchell and his brother, 9-year-old LaMar Mitchell, died when a fire raged through their father’s home as they slept.

Sniegocki and Zlotek were sent to canvass the second floor of the home, but called an all-clear despite not properly searching the rooms, according to an investigation by Barton. It wasn’t until a second team went to the room that they found the first sibling “to the immediate left” of the main entrance and then the second at least partly on a bed.

“Firefighters are trained to save lives. They are trained to look for people who may have passed out from smoke inhalation or are trapped in the fire. This didn’t happen with my sons,” the boys’ mother, Crystal Cooper, told the city council in October.

Because of this, and particularly because he believed they lied on their reports after the fact, the former fire chief decided to terminate the men.

In Barton’s telling, he was overridden by the mayor at the urging of the fire union, a claim that would appear to at least partially confirm swirling allegations since last month of a cover-up by the administration in the run-up to an election.

Neither the mayor’s office nor a representative of the firefighters’ union immediately responded to requests for comment. The mayor’s office has previously denied the claims in the strongest possible terms.

“At no point did undue influence by Mayor Neeley or any other elected official affect the outcome of the investigation or the discipline imposed,” read a statement on behalf of the City of Flint administration sent to The Daily Beast in October. “Due to ongoing litigation and a labor grievance related to this incident, the City cannot comment further.”

Following the decision not to fire the two men, Barton said, he was silenced by the administration and forbidden from speaking to the press despite his wish to set the record straight.

So when the boys’ mother spoke out, and he was questioned in front of the city council on Oct. 19, Barton said, he refused to stay quiet—despite knowing there was nothing he could say to comfort Cooper and her family.

“The mother has an attorney, the father has an attorney, and the fact that I know I’m going to end up in court, 100 percent sure I’m going to end up in court. I would never put my hand on the Bible and tell a lie, I would never do that. And I’m sayin’ I will never dishonor my mother’s name and the people who taught me to do the right thing,” Barton said.

“That’s why I stood firm on my decision, even though it got me fired, and I would make the same decision again knowing the outcome,” he said.

Sniegocki resigned in the early days following the fire. Zlotek was briefly put back on the force after two weeks of suspension and additional EMS training. Neither was ever fired, and Zlotek has reportedly since snagged a new gig elsewhere.

In early November, one of the two firefighters, speaking anonymously to ABC12, said that they were not lying. “We did search the bedroom, but did not realize that there was a smaller room attached to it,” he told the local TV station.

Barton said that Neeley felt he needed to cover up his decision in the Pulaski Street fire case because, after news got out that Barton was overruled, “the public was mad.”

And while Barton doesn’t believe the firefighters’ actions were racially biased, “it turned racial because you had two young Black kids that died in the City of Flint that were never mentioned” while two white boys lost in another fire nearby received vastly more attention.

“I told the truth, but I’m being—I’m being villainized by the administration and the union,” Barton told The Daily Beast.

“I’ve been silenced and I’m not gonna be silenced anymore,” he added.

Read more at The Daily Beast.

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