Involuntary Disability Retirement for NJ LEOs involved in Fatal Shootings ?

[Erick Gelhaus]

This "idea" ... HackGagAckPhft! ... was floated locally a few years back. From our perspective it is clearly a terrible idea to force an officer to retirement after one, two, or however many shootings.

Unfortunately, it is getting traction in some places. The guy I shared a table with during the week long ForceScience class was being forcibly retired by his agency in his late 30s. He'd had six or seven shootings, ALL cleared and legally/morally/ethically justified, in both patrol & SWAT. New chief came in & he got retired.

Verified word is that deputies at one large west coast special enforcement bureau are getting bounced off special weapons teams after 3-4 shootings. For guys at the pinnacle of their career, that might as well be retirement.

Someone somewhere is pushing the idea of ruining guys & gals through back channels. No doubt that'll impact working cops and deter them that much more.

[HCM]

This "idea" ... HackGagAckPhft! ... was floated locally a few years back. From our perspective it is clearly a terrible idea to force an officer to retirement after one, two, or however many shootings.

Unfortunately, it is getting traction in some places. The guy I shared a table with during the week long ForceScience class was being forcibly retired by his agency in his late 30s. He'd had six or seven shootings, ALL cleared and legally/morally/ethically justified, in both patrol & SWAT. New chief came in & he got retired.

Verified word is that deputies at one large west coast special enforcement bureau are getting bounced off special weapons teams after 3-4 shootings. For guys at the pinnacle of their career, that might as well be retirement.

Someone somewhere is pushing the idea of ruining guys & gals through back channels. No doubt that'll impact working cops and deter them that much more.

Interesting. What grounds are they citing to retire them ? Fitness for duty / Psyche ?

[voodoo_man]

This won't stand up in civil court. You can't involuntary retire an officer because they were in a shoot.

Hell if this even remotely has legs in these department's then the officers should be filing the same paperwork for ineffective supervisors and brass. If it works down the ladder it will work up the ladder too.

[Poconnor]

I didn't want to retire but when workers Comp started that train I figured out quick it was get on board or get run over. Retiring is a lot better than being fired. We all know there are a lot of whore lawyers but there are a lot of whore doctors too. The doctors see you for 10 minutes for an IME ( independant medical exam) and get paid 5000 bucks to write what the insurance company wants. I had a cynical old timer explain it to me one time. We were talking about how departments can influence promotion interviews but it applies to disability retirements too. He explained that the testing agency gets paid thousands of dollars and if they ever want to get hired again they play ball. Most depts here test every two years whether they are hiring or not. The candidates pay to take the test so it's free money for the township that was never in the budget. It goes like this - we have a great candidate and we think he's awesome. What do you think? Or for the doctor we think he's faking it or better yet we think he's really injured bad and are worried he won't come back, it's a variation of the army 1SG speech- you all suck or your the best there is. I didn't get any help from my union when I got hurt beyond giving me the name of an attorney. I had to pay for all of it out of my own pocket. Thank god DB helped me out by buying a bunch of guns from me. The City of allentown wanted to lower the pensions off officers already retired. They took them to court and forced them to settle by not paying the retirees. Allentown put the retirees pension checks in escrow. How many police officers to you know can live without pay?

[blues]

With all the wonderful policies already in place and those planned, I can only imagine the future of law enforcement in this country. Doesn't paint a rosy picture.

And if Trump has his way, all of our (federal) pensions will be eroded as well. Covfefe!!!

[psalms144.1]

WRT size of the town, that's damn near rural by standards up here. Remember that the population density in the NYC area is around 27K/square mile...

Having thrown in that useless factoid, this is just another day in the life of the region where corruption was invented. Louisiana ain't got nothing on the "cash is king" mentality in NY and the surrounding regions.

[blues]

Corruption is, imho, rampant from the largest to the smallest in probably near equivalent proportion. We've all seen the corrupt little towns and the corrupt big cities. No place is immune. At least I'm not inclined to believe so.