Step by step and day by day, the Dominic Biscari case is becoming the city of Kansas City’s worst nightmare.
The Kansas City Star reported today that survivors of three people killed in a horrible fire-truck crash last Dec. 15 have filed a lawsuit contending that the city is liable for an arbitration award of $32.4 million that a Jackson County Circuit Court judge approved on Nov. 1.
Biscari, the “fire apparatus operator” who was behind the wheel that night, almost certainly isn’t a millionaire and won’t be able to pay much of the award.
The city, on the other hand, has an annual budget of more than $1 billion, and it probably will be coughing up money that otherwise could have gone toward basic services like community center improvements, street resurfacing and bulky-item pickup.
The night of the crash, Biscari apparently was getting such a rush wheeling his big rig fast and recklessly that he failed to apply the brakes after a dispatcher told the crew to “stand down.”
In layman’s terms, “stand down,” means what it sounds like: Stop. The emergency is over. A minute later, however, Biscari was proceeding at 50 miles an hour through the intersection of Broadway and Westport Road when he plowed into two pedestrians and a car in which two people were riding. Both occupants of the vehicle were killed, as was one of the pedestrians.
The victims were Jennifer San Nicolas, 41, Michael Elwood, 25, and Tami Knight, also 41.
Here is a screen shot that shows the fire truck about to slam into the vehicle in which San Nicolas and Elwood were riding.
This disaster was set in motion over many years — years during which Local 42 of the International Association of Fire Fighters extracted concession after concession from an obliging City Council and years during which Fire Department management became gun shy of reining in a problematic fire fighter like Biscari.
Why was the City Council so obliging? Because Local 42 is the most powerful force in city elections, and in election after election, City Council candidates seek its endorsement. If they get it, their chances of winning are greatly increased.
Mayor Quinton Lucas is one who enjoyed Local 42 support in his 2019 election, and he will undoubtedly have it when he runs for re-election next spring.
I have no beef with Local 42 endorsing candidates, but Dominic Biscari was a proven, reckless driver who should have had his driving privileges taken away before the crash. Three months earlier, in September 2021, an EMT reported that Biscari, while driving an ambulance (the Fire Department also runs the ambulance service) had accelerated to 70 mph on Broadway during an emergency run. Biscari was driving so fast and taking turns so hard that EMTs were tossed out of their seats in the back of the vehicle.
Tellingly, the complaining EMT reported that she had been on two previous runs when Biscari was speeding unnecessarily and driving recklessly.
Given that report, Fire Chief Donna Lake should have demoted Biscari or set that process in motion, if that’s what it takes under the collective bargaining agreement. But that didn’t happen, probably because it would have meant the city would have had to engage Local 42 on a contract “grievance,” which the city might have lost because of the power the union has assembled over decades. So, apparently, no action was taken.
Complicating this case is the fact that after kissing Local 42’s ass for decades, the city tried to distance itself from Biscari after the crash. What happened was that in the course of the lawsuit the city withdrew its legal representation of Biscari. The city’s collective bargaining agreement with the union appears to require that representation. And there is no question that on the night he killed three people Biscari was a full-fledged, union-protected city employee. Consequently, it’s almost impossible to imagine the city will be held harmless for what he did.
As Tim Dollar, an attorney for the survivors’ family members said a few months ago, “It is important for accountability…that at least we hold people accountable and…that there be better training, better supervision, better enforcement of standards.”
In this case, the city almost surely will pay dearly for abdicating its responsibility to train and properly supervise Biscari and, more generally, to maintain acceptable Fire Department standards.
JimmyCsays: At the juncture of journalism and daily life in KC 
Ballsy column. Good job, Fitz.
As a member of the KCPD in the 1970s and 1980s, I was one of the “lucky” hundred or so officers who was involuntarily selected to don firefighter gear during the three infamous fire strikes the city suffered through back then. Biscari may not have even been born then, but there were hundreds of others like him who should have been fired for violating the law with their illegal actions. That never happened then, either…and for the same lack of will on the part of the city leadership at the time.
I remember that during one of those strikes, in the mid-1970s, a fire fighter who was a union official, Ed Phillips, was charged with arson. I covered the trial. The jury found him not guilty but not because he didn’t do it, because the evidence didn’t prove it beyond a reasonable doubt.
Citizens of KCMO seem to believe that if we had local control of the police that our major problems with the police department would be solved, including dealings with the police union.
Well, KCMO has local control of the fire department, yet our major problems with the fire department aren’t solved (including dealings with the fire fighters union). Unfortunately, there are no quick fixes to either the police or fire department.