Gainesville firefighters in midst of controversy

Gary Sprifke Jr. and Kevin Dickey recently found themselves in a situation they don’t like.

They were suspended from the Gainesville Volunteer Fire Department.

Both men started as volunteer firefighters in Prince William County in 1990, but said their troubles started on Aug. 5, on election night at Station 4.

Dickey was running for treasurer, a position held by Wanda Bird, the wife of Richard Bird, the chief of the volunteer department.

Sprifke was running for a position on the board of directors.

The men said Richard Bird suspended them from the department 30 minutes before the election was to take place.

Sprifke said Richard Bird charged him with falsifying official documents.

Dickey still doesn’t know what he was charged with.

On Sept. 16, the Prince William Board of County Supervisors authorized an audit of the department, said Nikki Brown, Prince William County spokeswoman.

Sprifke and Dickey said they did nothing wrong. “We had never, ever violated a rule or bylaw in this station,” Dickey said.

Soon after their suspensions, Dickey and Sprifke started collecting documentation, hired a lawyer and took their case to the Prince William County Fire and Rescue Association, which opened an investigation.

Among the documents they collected was a letter from Prince William Fire and Rescue Chief Kevin McGee, who is also the president of the fire and rescue association.

In the letter that was addressed to John McCarty, president of the Gainesville District Volunteer Fire Department, McGee wrote that the association could not conclude the investigation “because of a lack of cooperation from the Gainesville Volunteer Fire Department Board of Directors, Chief Bird and no proper notice was offered to the suspended members.”

The letter further stated that the investigators had determined that Sprifke had not falsified documents and Dickey never got “proper notice of the charges against him.”

McGee recommended that Sprifke and Dickey be reinstated.

Sprifke and Dickey said they don’t know if they will ever be able to volunteer in the county again.

“Until this audit gets finished with all the facts, there’s no way for me to clear my name,” the 37-year-old Sprifke said.“I never thought this would happen to me.”

The audit is being conducted by the county’s Internal Audit Division and is ongoing, Brown said.

Information about the audit will not be available under the Freedom of Information Act until the audit is completed and made public in early 2009, Brown said.

Dickey said he resents the lack of due process.

“He’s done us this way and has not given us any chance at all to sit down in front of any kind of mediation to get this straightened out,” he said.

In a short phone interview, Bird said he could not comment on the case until he had spoken to his lawyer.

Keith Walker can be reached at 703-369-6751.