Bellingham PD detective accused of 'misusing public funds' for dry cleaning

BELLINGHAM, Wash. - The official accusation against Bellingham Police detective Bo McGinty is "misappropriation of funds," but put simply: he spent his colleague's dry cleaning funds that weren't being used.

On Aug. 18 McGinty was terminated, the end of a roughly three-month long investigation.

"I don’t understand it, and I don’t try" said McGinty, speaking from a friend’s house days after packing up his family’s home. "I feel like someone’s driving this train, and I don’t know who."

As McGinty explains it, he never lied about what he was doing. He figured the budget had an allotment for dry cleaning, and if his co-worker wasn’t using theirs—he would.

In May 2023, an employee noticed that two detectives were spending more than others within the department on dry cleaning. When an email was sent to McGinty and another detective, he responded: "Justin has zero to blame; this one is all me."

He went on to request additional funding for dry cleaning, never realizing that higher-ups viewed the use of his colleague’s dry cleaning allotment as theft.

A union contract allows officers to clean "one uniform a week," though there was confusion over what that meant for detectives. Over the years, supervisors had called it anywhere from two to four items—others called it "whatever was reasonable."

Over the course of eight weeks, an internal investigation interviewed eleven different people, ranging from officers to dry cleaning employees at the business the city contract utilizes. They determined that between March 2022 and May 2023, McGinty had utilized $750.98 worth of dry cleaning under the other detective's name, enough to hand over a potential criminal investigation over to an outside department.

Meanwhile, McGinty was sitting at home wanting to get back to work. Over the course of the department’s internal investigation, he was collecting roughly $20,000 while on administrative leave. That doesn’t include the cost to investigate.

"I’m a simple guy," he said. "Seems to me they could have come to be and said, ‘Hey Bo, are you doing this?’"

"I’d have said ‘Yes, I have’ from the beginning. Absolutely. ‘Oh, great. Stop.’ Okay? That’s a three-minute conversation. Even if they wanted to say ‘Pay back the extra dry cleaning you’ve done over the 18 months,’ fine. I did not think it’d constitute a three-month long investigation spending that much of the city’s money. I think the community would be a little upset."

Bellingham Police Chief Mertzig declined to comment on camera about the decision to investigate McGinty, or fire him.

Through a public information officer, the department explained that the discrepancy went beyond dry cleaning, that they viewed the issue as an ethics problem.

"The facts of this investigation is the misuse of funds for dry cleaning, but the core of the case is about ethics," said Lieutenant Claudia Murphy. "That’s what led to the termination. I understand you say it’s about dry cleaning, it’s not—it’s about ethics, it involved an ethical decision-making process that was not up to the standard that our department holds itself to."

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McGinty told FOX 13 that he’s not done fighting for his badge; he’ll take part in an arbitration process to see whether he will be reinstated.

In the meantime, he and his three children have had to leave the home their family grew up in.

"It’s a good time to show them who I am," he said. "Some men can’t stand in their convictions. I am. I have. I don’t think I deserve this."