A report issued today concludes that the slow clean-up after December’s blizzard was not the result of a deliberate slowdown by city sanitation workers. The city’s Department of Investigation found that in many cases plows simply got stuck in the snow.

At the time, allegations surfaced that Department of Sanitation workers deliberately avoided plowing many of the city’s streets. The DOI says it looked into those claims and says there was no such evidence of a slowdown.

However, the report details a number of reasons why the public may have thought that sanitation workers were slacking off on the job.

The report found several instances where trucks got stuck in the snow and workers were told to stay with their vehicles. The report says that this gave New Yorkers a negative impression of the clean-up effort because those sanitation workers were seen napping, buying coffee or food.

There was one case, in Brooklyn, where sanitation workers in a stranded vehicle did buy beer. The DOI recovered a portion of surveillance footage from the store that clearly showed sanitation workers buying booze.

DOI says one of the big problems also appears to be with the sanitation department’s snow chains. Investigators found that a whopping 44 percent of snow chains used after the blizzard broke during the cleanup.

The initial report of a possible slowdown came from Queens City Councilman Dan Halloran who said sanitation workers told him about it.

According to the DOI report, Halloran refused to tell investigators who he had spoken with and did not give them any information that showed a possible slowdown had occurred.

(Source: NY1)