Battling treacherous office chairs and aching backs, aging cops and firefighters miss years of work and collect twice the pay
When
Capt. Tia Morris turned 50, after about three decades in the Los
Angeles Police Department, she became eligible to retire with nearly 90%
of her salary.
But like many cops and
firefighters in her position, the decision to keep working was a
financial no-brainer, thanks to a program that allowed her to nearly
double her pay by keeping her salary while also collecting her pension.
A
month after Morris entered the program, her husband, a detective,
joined too. Their combined income for four years in the Deferred
Retirement Option Plan was just shy of $2 million, city payroll records
show.
But the city didn’t benefit much from
the Morrises’ experience: They both filed claims for carpal tunnel
syndrome and other cumulative ailments about halfway through the
program. She spent nearly two years on disability and sick leave; he
missed more than two years, according to a Times analysis of city
payroll data.
The
couple spent at least some of their paid time off recovering at their
condo in Cabo San Lucas and starting a family theater production company
with their daughter, according to Tia Morris’ Facebook posts and her self-published autobiography. They declined to comment for this story.
The
Morrises are far from alone. In fact, they’re among hundreds of Los
Angeles police and firefighters who have turned the DROP program — which
has doled out more than $1.6 billion in extra pension payments since
its inception in 2002 — into an extended leave at nearly twice the pay, a
Times investigation has found.
Former Police
Capt. Daryl Russell, who collected $1.5 million over five years in the
program, missed nearly three of those years because of pain from a bad
knee, carpal tunnel and multiple injuries he claimed he suffered after
falling out of an office chair.
“It was defective,” Russell said of the chair during a recent interview. “I believe the screws underneath came out.”
Former
firefighter Thomas Futterer, an avid runner who lives in Long Beach,
hurt a knee “misstepping off the fire truck,” three weeks after entering
DROP, according to city records. The injury kept him off the job for
almost a full year.
Less than two months
after the knee injury, a Tom Futterer from Long Beach crossed the finish
line of a half-marathon in Portland, Ore., in a brisk 2:05:23,
according to race results posted online. Only one Tom Futterer lives in Long Beach, according to public records.
Futterer
did not respond to repeated requests for comment. His attorneys, Roger
Cognata and Robert Sherwin, refused to confirm whether Futterer had run
the half-marathon in Oregon.
Big money, questionable results
City
officials say they have never studied the amount of disability and sick
time taken by DROP participants, but a Times review of thousands of
pages of workers’ compensation files and tens of millions of
computerized payroll and pension records from July 2008 to July 2017
found:
- Police and firefighters in the DROP program were nearly twice as likely to miss work for injuries, illness or paid leave.
- Those taking disability leave while in DROP missed a combined 2.4 million hours of work for leaves and sick time and were paid more than $220 million for the time off.
- More than a third (36%) of police officers who entered the program went out on injury leave. At the fire department, it was 70%.
- The average time off for those who took injury leaves was nearly 10 months. At least 370 missed more than a year.
- In addition to the salary and pension payments, leaves taken by DROP participants create a third cost for taxpayers: The Fire Department pays overtime to fill their shifts; the Police Department requires other officers to cover their work.
The idea
of allowing retirement-age public employees to collect their pensions
while working and receiving paychecks originated more than three decades
ago in tiny East Baton Rouge, La.
But it
wasn’t envisioned as a program to retain experienced employees, said
Jeffrey Yates, the city’s retirement administrator. In fact, the goal
was the opposite: to discourage older employees from staying so long
that they limited upward mobility for younger workers. And it had a
two-year time limit.
Since then, versions of
the program have been adopted by dozens of states, counties and cities
across the country. The details vary — some have short terms to
encourage early retirement, others have long terms to retain experience —
but the central appeal for employees is constant: two large checks
instead of one.
Allowing employees to take
long stretches of paid time off while in DROP runs counter to Los
Angeles city leaders’ stated rationale for the program, which was to
keep experienced and savvy veterans in firehouses and police precincts
serving the public and mentoring new recruits.
‘That was a mistake’
The
Los Angeles police union proposed the program to former Mayor Richard
Riordan in 2000 when senior officers were retiring early or leaving for
other jobs in the wake of the Rampart scandal, which exposed widespread
corruption within the department.
Voters
approved a 2001 ballot measure that promised “no additional cost to the
city” to create the program. Since then, roughly 5,000 of the city’s
public safety officers have joined DROP, which allows them to collect
their salary and pension simultaneously for up to five years at the end
of their careers.
In 2016, officers exiting
the program had been paid an average of $434,000 in extra pension
payments, according to a Times analysis of Los Angeles Police and Fire
Pension fund data.
Asked about the program last year, Riordan said: “Oh, yeah, that was a mistake.”
Riordan
said he supported DROP to appease the police union during a tumultuous
period in city politics, but that it had been dogged by rumors of abuse
from the beginning.
Told that nearly half of
all DROP participants who entered the program had subsequently gone out
on disability leaves, Riordan, now 87, said he remembered hearing the
number was even higher. “Either way, it’s total fraud.”
The
Times reviewed thousands of pages of workers’ compensation records for
police and firefighters who took disability leaves while in DROP. None
of the injuries described in those files was the immediate result of
intense action, such as running into a burning building or confronting a
combative suspect.
Instead, the injuries
claimed by program participants, who must be 50 years old with 25 years
of experience, were for ailments that afflict aging bodies regardless of
profession: cumulative trauma to knees and backs, high blood pressure,
cancer and carpal tunnel syndrome — all of which, under state law, are presumed to be job-related for police and firefighters.
City
officials acknowledged that taking long leaves at the end of careers to
treat nagging injuries is an ingrained part of the culture.
“Historically,
police and firefighters have always waited until they’re close to
retirement to go out and fix all their aches and pains,” said Maritta
Aspen, who is in charge of employee relations for the city
administrative officer.
Asked whether it
makes sense to pay them double while they take time off to do that,
Aspen said, “Obviously, that wasn’t the intent. It was to have them
working for a longer period of time, to extend their careers.”
Former LAPD Sgt. Gregory Renner was paid almost $1.2 million for his five years in DROP. He missed nearly three of those years on disability and sick leave, payroll records show.
Before
Renner entered the program in 2011, he had filed at least 15 workers’
compensation claims for injuries including sore knees, wrists and
shoulders, high blood pressure, ulcers, a tumor on his bladder, a hernia
and a sharp pain he felt in his left shoulder while lifting books
overhead.
Renner said his most painful injury
occurred during the 1992 riots when a looter threw a video cassette
recorder at him, damaging his elbow. He left the field for a desk job in
the mid-90s.
Renner’s injuries have cost the city more than $2 million, city records show.
City
officials concede that, aside from making sure an employee meets the
age and experience requirements, there is no screening of applicants
before accepting them into DROP. And once in the program, there is no
mechanism to suspend the extra pension payments no matter how long an
employee is unable to work.
“When you come in
to sign up for DROP, you have to be on active duty, but then the
following day you could trip on a ladder, or whatever it might be, and
you could be out until the day you exit,” said Raymond Ciranna, general
manager of Los Angeles Fire and Police Pensions, which administers the
program.
Difficult to change the rules
Senior
Los Angeles Fire Department officials — many of whom are in DROP and
stand to collect high six-figure payments from the program — declined to
comment for this story.
Assistant Police
Chief Jorge Villegas, who joined DROP in 2015 and could walk away with
nearly $900,000 in extra pension pay at the end, said any change to the
rules would require careful deliberation.
“I
think that’s something that has to be negotiated with the various
unions,” Villegas said. Asked whether the department should be able to
prevent employees with poor attendance because of a long history of
injury claims from entering the program, Villegas said, “I think we
cannot be discriminatory.”
Villegas has not taken any time off for injuries since joining DROP, city records show.
When
most Los Angeles taxpayers reach the standard retirement age, 65, they
face a stark choice: keep working and collecting their paychecks or quit
and start collecting Social Security, which replaces only a small
fraction of annual wages for most people.
When
city firefighters or police officers reach their retirement age, 50,
the choices are far better. They can keep working for a paycheck, they
can retire with up to 90% of their salary in pension and city-subsidized
health insurance for life, or they can enter DROP. For many, the choice
is easy.
If they choose DROP, they keep
working and collecting their paychecks for up to five years while their
pension checks are deposited into a special account. They don’t get any
more pension credit for the time they spend in DROP — pensions typically
increase with every extra year worked — but the city guarantees 5%
interest on the money in the account. The city also adds annual
cost-of-living raises to the pension checks to make sure they keep pace
with inflation.
When the employee quits
working and exits the DROP program, the paychecks stop, the pension
continues and the money in the account is transferred to the employee.
Of
the 2,583 cops and firefighters who entered the program between July 1,
2008, and July 1, 2017, 860 have collected more than $1 million in
combined salary and pension payments during their tenure in DROP, The
Times found. Thirty-one have collected more than $2 million.
Because
pension payments that begin early are usually a bit smaller, union
leaders argue the cost to the employer is offset over time. But in
recent years, a growing number of jurisdictions have abandoned or
drastically scaled back DROP programs because the math doesn’t work.
Other cities dropping DROP
Instead
of saving money, or remaining “cost-neutral,” the programs lead to
ballooning pension costs and accusations that employees are simply
double-dipping.
In Alabama, a statewide DROP
was discontinued in 2011 after reports that some of the top
beneficiaries were high-level administrators, lobbyists and football
coaches.
San Diego closed its DROP to new employees in 2005 after officials decided it was ineffective and too costly.
Despite
the backlash against the cost of the programs, there has been little
public scrutiny of employees taking long stretches of paid injury time
while also collecting dual checks.
The Times
contacted officials and reviewed policies in roughly a dozen
jurisdictions with DROP programs around the country and found none that
examined the frequency of long injury leaves.
San
Francisco was the only jurisdiction The Times found that implemented a
simple rule to prevent them: Any officers who received temporary
disability payments would have their pension payments suspended until
they became fit for duty again. When they returned to work, the payments
would be reinstated.
Micki Callahan,
director of San Francisco's Department of Human Resources, said the
provision was introduced to prevent abuse. “Isn't it wasteful to spend
this money for people who aren't even at work?"
Even
with that provision, officials in San Francisco found the DROP program
too expensive and discontinued it within three years.
One
incentive for cops and firefighters to file a workers’ comp claim,
rather than use their health insurance, is that their salaries are
exempt from federal and state income tax while they’re out on disability
leave for a job-related injury.
That means
they take home substantially more of their salary while they’re home
recovering than they would if they went to work. If they wait until
they’re in DROP to take off a few months — or a year, or two — they
receive pension checks on top of the tax-free salary.
The
downside of the workers’ comp system, according to interviews with DROP
participants, is the difficulty getting the city to approve ongoing
medical treatment for cumulative injuries, especially if an employee
claims several of them.
Claims adjusters
working for the city are particularly slow to approve significant
surgeries, such as knee replacements, employees said. They try to save
money by encouraging employees to try weight loss, physical therapy and
cortisone injections first, even if the employee’s personal doctor has
recommended surgery.
The delays cost the city money, employees argue, because they end up on disability leave longer.
‘That last year was about me’
All that time away from the job has another negative impact, according to employees who have been through it: lower self-esteem.
“I
hated it,” Renner said of the nearly three years he spent off duty
waiting for, and recovering from, treatment for his bad back, sore knees
and an injured thumb while he was in DROP. “You feel like a worthless
piece of trash.”
Between salary and pension,
the city paid Renner more than $650,000 for time off while he was in the
DROP program, The Times analysis found.
Russell,
the former police captain, said he would have loved to return for light
duty during his nearly three years off, but his superiors never called
to offer him that chance.
LAPD officials
disputed that account, saying they have a policy of contacting employees
who are out sick or injured every seven days, and that Russell was
contacted at least 84 times.
Villegas said
Russell should not have needed any special accommodation because “the
captain’s job is a desk job. Certainly you can come back to answer
phones and respond to emails if you want to.”
While
it’s unlikely the department would bother pursuing charges years after
the fact, Russell’s suggestion that he would’ve returned if contacted
“may be evidence of criminal fraud,” Villegas said, because it implies
Russell was actually able to work. “He’s suggesting that he’s healed if
we would have called him,” Villegas said.
Russell’s
time off began when he tore his right biceps reaching for a cooler in
his garage before a Super Bowl party in 2012. That wasn’t a work-related
injury, but while recovering from surgery the pain spread.
“I
suddenly start having trouble with my wrists … just out of the blue,”
Russell said. He was found to have carpal tunnel syndrome and had
additional surgery.
After a long stretch
recovering from that, he returned to the office only to have the chair
collapse beneath him. He wound up on the floor with a reinjured wrist
and a newly injured back, Russell said.
For each workplace injury, police and firefighters are allowed up to 364 days of injury leave.
As
he recovered from his fall from the chair, Russell sought treatment for
cumulative trauma to his knee. The city was slow to approve surgery to
fix the problem, Russell said, so he never returned to work.
“That last year was about me,” Russell said. “It was about taking care of myself.”
The city paid him more than $830,000 for his time off during DROP, according to The Times’ analysis.
In
her self-published autobiography, “Mama’s Curse,” former LAPD Capt. Tia
Morris describes her 2006 diagnosis of breast cancer — the disease that
killed her mother — and the months of successful treatment that
followed. She also writes about her sense of betrayal five years later
when she was passed over for promotion in the Van Nuys division — a
little more than a year after she entered DROP.
“I felt defeated and irrelevant, so I was done for once and for all with the LAPD,” she wrote.
Instead
of simply retiring with her pension and city-paid health insurance,
however, Morris remained in DROP and started taking long disability
leaves for injuries she said she had accumulated during decades on the
force — collecting her salary and pension all the while.
She
filed workers’ comp claims for carpal tunnel in both hands, pain in her
neck, a sore elbow, a sore shoulder, a sore knee and a
methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus (MRSA) infection she claimed
she’d contracted from filthy conditions at the department’s Southwest
Division.
Of her carpal tunnel treatment in
February 2012, she wrote, “I wasn’t happy about having surgery but I was
happy to be away from work.”
With the exception of a few workdays in June 2012, she remained on injury
leave until September 2013, when she retired, city records show. The
city paid her nearly $470,000 for the time off in DROP, The Times’
analysis found.
Her husband, Percy Morris, filed claims for carpal tunnel, MRSA and a back injury while in DROP. He was paid about $476,000 for the more than two years he took off during the program, The Times found.
The
injuries prevented the couple from doing their desk jobs at the LAPD —
hers was administrative, he spent at least half his time typing reports —
but they were far from idle.
Postcard from Cabo San Lucas
Photos
posted to Tia Morris’ Facebook profile while they were both in DROP and
Percy Morris was on injury leave show the couple embracing on the beach
in Cabo San Lucas, where they bought a timeshare. In her autobiography,
Tia writes about starting the theater production company shortly after
entering DROP.
They staged plays and produced
films written and directed by their daughter, pitching in with
everything from renting theaters and furnishing sets to baking cookies
to sell to audiences. It was all “perfect for our transition from law
enforcement to a much happier place,” Tia wrote.
It
was important, however, to make sure the hours she spent working for
the family business did not overlap with hours she otherwise would have
been scheduled to work at the LAPD.
“I did not want any work comp fraud issues,” she wrote, “so I was letter of the law.”
Since
the program’s inception, not a single DROP participant has been charged
with workers’ compensation fraud, court records show.
jack.dolan@latimes.comTwitter: @JackDolanLAT
gus.garcia-roberts@latimes.com
Twitter: @GGarciaRoberts
ryan.menezes@latimes.com
Twitter: @ryanvmenezes
Jack
Dolan is an investigative reporter for the Los Angeles Times. A winner
of several national investigative reporting awards, he was a finalist
for the Pulitzer Prize in 2001 for a series revealing the doctors with
the worst disciplinary histories in the country, using records the
federal government sought to keep secret. He began his newspaper career
at the Hartford Courant in Connecticut, where he grew up, and worked at
the Miami Herald before coming to The Times.
Ryan
Menezes joined the Los Angeles Times in 2013. He primarily conducts
analyses for reporting projects as a hand with the Data Desk while
writing about a multitude of topics. Occasionally, he will post scripts
written in R or Python to GitHub.
Ryan studied statistics at UCLA, where he also wrote editorials and
covered various sports for the student newspaper in between games of
pick-up basketball.
