By April Lehmbeck
C & G Staff Writer

HARPER WOODS — A captain in the Fire Department was let go following an accident that broke windows in the Police Department and injured a police sergeant March 5, seemingly ratcheting up already-existing tensions as the city is embroiled in a controversy over whether to combine services into one Public Safety Department.

By the middle of this week, City Manager James Leidlein said he expected the captain — whom the city administration wasn’t naming — would be back on duty “shortly” due to staffing levels, but the incident was actually one of two in which he was involved still under investigation.

“There’s a couple of incidents that we’re investigating with the captain,” he said.

“I just relieved him of duty,” Leidlein said, describing his actions against the captain following the fire-equipment training accident.

Leidlein would not comment on the other incident they are investigating because he said he first needed to sit down with Fire Chief Sean Gunnery, who was away from the city at a training seminar.

The March 5 incident took place in the morning when firefighters were outside the fire station — which neighbors the Police Department — testing a pump on an engine that wasn’t working right.

“They claim that there was a surge in the hose and it caused him to fall backwards into the fire truck,” Leidlein said.

The high-pressure stream of water struck and broke two windows in the police station, where the police sergeant who was injured was that morning.

“The sergeant was working at a desk in the briefing room (and) he heard a loud noise,” police officials stated in a press release. “The sergeant looked up and observed a window crashing into the room.

“The sergeant then heard another loud bang and observed a second window shatter and glass fall into the room,” police stated.

The sergeant didn’t know what was going on when the glass shattered.

“The sergeant’s first reaction was that he was being shot at from outside the building, and he and another officer immediately left the room,” according to police.

Glass from the shattered window got into one of the sergeant’s eyes — he needed to have the glass removed at a local hospital — but he is not permanently injured, officials said.

“He was off for three days, but he’s back to work right now,” Police Chief Randolph Skotarczyk said.

Skotarczyk said he’s “just glad no one was hurt badly.”

With tension already existing between police and fire over the city’s ongoing public safety debate — which has included a lawsuit against the city over its attempt to cross-train police and fire personnel — this incident seems to have just added to the trouble, according to firefighters’ description of what took place afterward.

“One of the police sergeants yelled and swore at (the captain), provoking a verbal exchange,” Harper Woods firefighter and Local 1188 President Pat Rollison said.

But the police press release simply stated that fire personnel explained to police what led to the incident — with no mention of a verbal altercation.

Rollison said the captain was “suspended” during the investigation of the incident.

“It is the hope and expectation of the union that (the captain) will be cleared of any wrongdoing and that he will be returned to work shortly,” Rollison said.