Source

Phoenix police officers paid during investigations

by Michael Ferraresi - Dec. 12, 2010 07:54 PM

The Arizona Republic

The Phoenix Police Department wastes hundreds of thousands of taxpayer dollars paying officers accused of misconduct to wait at home as internal investigations drag on for as long as a year, according to a review by a Phoenix-based conservative think tank.

Phoenix police officers logged more than 25,400 hours of paid leave during a 30-month period through June, including those reinstated after testing positive for steroids and another charged with assault for beating his son with a belt, the report showed. [25,400 hours is 635 40 hour weeks or 12 years of full time work!]

The total hours amounted to about 12 years of work time of one officer, or more than $1 million based on an officer's average salary, including benefits, of at least $70,000.

The Goldwater Institute investigation published earlier this month also indicated that some cases can take a year or more as Phoenix police officers, corrections officers, school-district workers and others collect paychecks while sitting at home during lengthy appeals of incidents that include employees' guilty pleas to felonies.

The majority of Phoenix cases of paid administrative leave involve police, said Phoenix Human Resources Director Kathy Haggerty.

"With personnel investigations, they're not always a simple matter," Haggerty said. "You need to make sure you have the evidence you need to come to an appropriate decision."

The findings highlighted the "undisciplined bureaucracy" of civil-service-appeals processes that force employees to sit on paid administrative leave, even in cases where misconduct was clearly identified.

Local police groups such as the Arizona Police Association plan to lobby state legislators next year to develop a new law limiting the time internal-affairs investigators can keep employees on paid administrative leave.

Phoenix Law Enforcement Association, the union for about 2,500 rank-and-file police officers, developed an agreement earlier this year with Police Department management to wrap cases within six months.

PLEA grievance chairman Dave Kothe said there are no teeth to the rules and no ramifications if cases drag on longer than six months, although more internal police-discipline cases are being resolved quicker than ever.

"They didn't see a drop in the quality of the product when it was getting done quicker," Kothe said. "If it's serious enough that you're going to send someone home, then it should be fast-tracked."

The union's concern is that officers are forced to waste time at home for several months to find out they deserve a one- or two-day suspension, or even just a written reprimand.

The lengthy investigations can bog down internal-affairs investigators who could be working more significant cases, and they tax police squads already stretched thin by budget constraints, according to police leaders.

Phoenix police Cmdr. Jeff Hynes, who oversaw the department's Professional Standards Bureau for more than a year before his recent reassignment, said there were 150 internal-discipline cases pending when he first took over the bureau. The number was reduced to under 100, although he said police management and labor leaders wanted to see more cases completed within six months.

Haggerty said the city would consider revamping the appeals process to streamline decisions, though she cautioned against making a sudden policy change that could lead to hasty decisions. A state law capping internal investigators at six months, for example, could force investigators to produce shaky findings that could be overturned in an appeal.

"If we're restricted in our ability to do that, that could be a problem - and that could be the public's problem," Haggerty said.

Other states, such as Florida and Georgia, have laws limiting internal investigations and the duration of paid administrative leave to save taxpayer money. Both states leave a final ruling on personnel matters with an agency director after a formal appeal, rather than leaving the decision to be made by a citizen-review panel, such as those who volunteer on discipline-review boards in Phoenix.

Arizona Department of Public Safety employees sat on paid administrative leave for more than 12,000 hours, or about 70 months of time they could have been on the street, investigator Mark Flatten said in the Goldwater study.

Flatten's review of more than 600 cases also revealed 38,000 hours logged by the Arizona Department of Economic Security and 26,600 by the Department of Corrections, including one case of a corrections officer who was off for nearly a year after his arrest on drug charges.

Phoenix officers involved in shootings are placed on paid administrative leave for the standard three days before they return to work. But other cases, in which officers are accused of crimes, can lead to complicated reviews that get dragged out or overturned by technicalities in the appeal process.

"In most of these cases, there was no dispute about the underlying conduct," Flatten said. "It became the technical, procedural argument. By the time it went through the courts, the underlying conduct became irrelevant."