NEWS > 15 November 2005

Article sourced from

Kykernel.com (subscription) -
15 November 2005

This article appeared in the above title/site.
To view it in its entirity click this link.

IN OUR OPINON: Abuse of disabi

Lexington has yet another reason to distrust authority, thanks to the murky inner workings of the city's police department.

Sandra Devers, a former assistant police chief who was investigated earlier this year and accused of falsifying her time card, was granted a disability pension last week and now won't have to pay taxes on the bulk of her $86,000 annual pension, according to the Lexington Herald-Leader.

Normally, this wouldn't be cause to wave any figurative red flags - especially in regard to disability benefits - but the grounds for suspicion are awfully firm. Devers retired in August, a move that ended an internal investigation into whether she had lied on her Lexington police time card, claiming to be at work when she was on vacation. She applied for disability retirement this summer, during the investigation, but then withdrew her application when Lexington Policemen's and Firefighters' Retirement Fund trustees voted to send her to a third doctor during their Aug. 10 meeting.

That same day, the Herald-Leader reported, Devers attended a closed-door meeting with a police disciplinary board about her time card. The next day, Devers applied for and later received a service retirement, based on her 33 years in the department. Police officials said they dropped the investigation because Devers was no longer an employee. Last month, Devers resubmitted her disability application, and last week, the board unanimously voted - without discussion - to grant her disability pension of more than 80 percent of her salary of about $105,355. About 75 percent of her $86,000-a-year pension will be tax-free because of her disability.

Interestingly enough, Devers, who supervised the police department's administrative services bureau and has not been on the streets in a decade, declined to elaborate on what injuries caused her disability.

Even more interesting: According to a recent Herald-Leader analysis of pension board records, for more than a decade, some police officers have evaded suspicions, demotions or terminations by applying for and receiving disability pensions before internal or criminal investigations could be completed.

We in no way endorse discrimination against those who apply for, and deserve, disability pension. But those who use the application as a means to evade investigation, as it seems some Lexington police officers have, are hiding behind a tarnished badge and a complete disregard for the ethics their post demands.

There is a wider, appalling trend - police officers seem to be treated more leniently for their crimes than the average citizen.

Last May, Lexington police officer John Lamb hit Rachel Burns, 24, in his police cruiser. Burns was pushed across Harrodsburg Road, over a four-inch concrete curb and through a wooden fence, according to Herald-Leader reports.

Lamb was driving either 71 or 81 mph, depending on whether one believes the city's accident-reconstruction unit or state police testimony. He was responding to a non-emergency call for assistance and was speeding without lights or sirens; state law mandates an officer be responding to an emergency call and operating both sirens and lights before being exempted from Kentucky speed limits. The speed limit on Harrodsburg road is 45 mph, clearly Lamb was breaking the law.

The facts make this a crystalline case: A local law enforcement official was responsible for the death of an innocent civilian.

If he were a regular civilian, Lamb would probably have been tried and convicted of reckless homicide like George Williams, an Eastern Kentucky truck driver convicted on three counts of reckless homicide after a 2003 accident on U.S. 23, and sentenced to 15 years in prison.

Instead, Lamb was suspended with pay and now receives a pension of nearly $22,000 per year, though he'd been on the force less than two years prior to the accident.

Police officers shouldn't be exempt from the repercussions of their transgressions any more than ordinary civilians. Officers are paid to uphold the laws they're sworn to protect, even against one of their own - not to defeat the legal system with a convoluted sense of righteous entitlement.

EiP Comments:

* We have no wish to infringe the copyright of any newspaper or periodical. If you feel that we have done so then please contact us with the details and we will remove the article. The articles republished on this site are provided for the purposes of research , private study, criticism , review, and the reporting of current events' We have no wish to infringe the copyright of any newspaper , periodical or other works. If you feel that we have done so then please contact us with the details and where necessary we will remove the work concerned.

Other related articles:

Article sourced from

Kykernel.com (subscription) -15 November 2005

IN OUR OPINON: Abuse of disabi

EiP Comments:

Kykernel.com (subscription) -
15 November 2005