A former Bellingham Police detective has been found not guilty of stealing hundreds of dollars in dry cleaning allotment between March 2022 and May 2023.
Originally, Adam McGinty, 43, faced three charges: felony misappropriation of funds by a public officer, misdemeanor official misconduct and misdemeanor third-degree theft.
McGinty was accused of using $750 of city money for dry cleaning that wasn’t under his name. Instead, he used another detective’s name to get additional work clothes cleaned.
In a decision Friday, Nov. 22, Judge Robert Olson found that the City of Bellingham wasn’t deprived of resources because McGinty used the dry cleaning allotment for work clothing, not personal items.
“The City of Bellingham may have gotten, and I would submit, likely did get a benefit, from all of the laundered items it paid for in the form of a professionally attired, if not nattily dressed, police detective,” Olson said. “Thus the City was deprived of nothing.”
Prior to the trial, the felony charge was dismissed. Halfway through the trial, the official misconduct misdemeanor also was dismissed.
“It’s the right answer,” said Jason Powers, McGinty’s attorney. “Judge Olson obviously made the right decision, and this probably shouldn’t have even been filed.”
McGinty was fired on Aug. 18, 2023 after being placed on administrative leave in June while the case was investigated internally by the Bellingham Police Department. However, he was given an unauthorized hero’s send-off, including a flag raising and police procession, weeks after he was fired.
During the three-day bench (non-jury) trial, Olson and members of McGinty’s family, who had flown in to watch, heard testimony from a number of people involved in the case, including staff from the police department and the City of Bellingham as well as the owner of the dry cleaning business.
The state argued McGinty willingly misused Detective Justin Fryksdale’s name for laundry while Powers argued there had been an agreement between the two on if McGinty could use the allotment.
Detective Fryksdale, whose laundry allowance McGinty used, said he was “livid” after he received an email asking him to rein in his dry cleaning spending when he hadn’t used the service since prior to the COVID-19 pandemic.
“She indicated that somebody was using my name for the laundry service,” he said, adding he had never given anyone permission to use his name.
McGinty, who took the stand on the final day of arguments, said he had an agreement with Fryksdale to use his dry cleaning allotment. Fryksdale, who was new to the detectives unit at the time, had said in conversation with McGinty that he wasn’t using his dry cleaning.
“I said something to the effect of ‘well, if you’re not using your account, I would like to use it,’” McGinty said. “It wasn’t a yes or no question. He never did a verbal answer, he just kind of head nodded. And there was nothing more said about that.”
When asked by his lawyer if he was trying to steal from the department, McGinty answered no.
“I wanted to dry clean my work clothes,” he said.
To avoid perceived conflicts of interest, the Mount Vernon Police Department pursued the criminal investigation against McGinty after the BPD internal investigation and Skagit County prosecuted based on their findings.
State: McGinty used Fryksdale’s name
Skagit County prosecutor Nathaniel Block argued McGinty stole from the City of Bellingham by using Fryksdale’s name to get more clothing cleaned than what is normally allowed under the dry cleaning agreement.
About $8,000 of the Bellingham Police Department’s budget a year is dedicated to an unofficial dry cleaning contract with Matson Dry Cleaning, said Renee Firos, the administrative coordinator of BPD.
Typically, police officers and detectives can drop off one uniform a week for cleaning. That can include shirts and pants for detectives who wear plain clothes, Firos said. The limit is established in the police union’s collective bargaining agreement.
A detailed spreadsheet is kept to track officers and detectives dry cleaning receipts, picked up by Firos every two weeks from Matson. If an officer’s receipt is over $30 in the two-week time period, Firos tends to send a “friendly reminder” email about the dry cleaning allotment.
In Firos’s 16 years with BPD, she estimated she sent three or four reminder emails about the allotment.
That’s what happened in the case of McGinty and Fryksdale.
The owner of Matson Dry Cleaning, Robert Matson, testified McGinty would separate piles of clothing when he came in for the cleaning service. One pile would be his work clothes, another his personal items and the third pile was Fryksdale’s clothing. McGinty would pay for his personal items while his work clothing, including the pile labeled as Fryksdale’s, was paid for by the department.
Matson never saw Fryksdale once during the year and a half McGinty was using his name.
McGinty lawyer: Dry cleaning contract unclear
Powers, a Mount Vernon-based criminal defense lawyer, argued McGinty, who worked five days a week, had been told by his supervisor when he started as a detective he could get four outfits cleaned every week.
The confusion was between what made up four outfits a week versus four articles of clothing a week.
“What is appropriate? We have emails from Sergeant Gutierrez that say no more than 10 [items], we have my client saying he thought he could use four… we have Renee Firos telling him not to worry about it until she finds Justin denied him permission and that’s what caused this,” Powers said.
Powers also attempted to cast doubt on Fryksdale’s assertion that he never gave McGinty permission by calling a detective who recounted Fryksdale’s propensity to forget things.
While Powers argued McGinty was open about using Fryksdale’s name and that they had had a previous conversation about the arrangement, prosecutor Block said “a nod and shake of the head” wasn’t enough in lieu of a verbal agreement.
“The defendant says that he never hid using Detective Fryksdale’s name, but he did from his superiors, he did from the people that have to pay the bills, the people that keep the budget,” Block said. “He never told any of them that he was going to use Detective Fryksdale’s name to get additional dry cleaning. He never did that. That is hiding.”
McGinty, who moved away from Bellingham following his ousting from the police department, appeared in-person for a majority of the trial. On Friday during Olson’s verdict reading, he appeared via Zoom.
Olson, in his judgement, agreed the dry cleaning terms were vague when it came to plain clothes as uniforms.
“It appears there was confusion or misunderstanding across the board about how many articles of clothing constituted the plain clothes uniform,” he said, adding that the warning system about using too much dry cleaning was also ambitious. “A plain clothes officer might select a three-piece suit, which would consist minimally of four articles of clothing… there is not apparent authority for the declaration that the city would only pay for two articles of clothing per week.”
Annie Todd is CDN’s criminal justice/enterprise reporter; reach her at annietodd@cascadiadaily.com; 360-922-3090 ext. 130.
