Articles
Archive of articles posted to the website.
I know things have been a little challenging lately, having to work during the pandemic and creating an increased risk to your health and safety, along with keeping your family safe from what you are exposed to at work. Well there is another challenging issue I need to bring to your attention that many of you may not be familiar with — the Equal Opportunity Department (EOD). EOD is an administra- tive investigative department in the City of Phoenix, separate from the police #10558 department, that is putting officers’ careers at risk with what I believe are some of the worst investigations I have ever had the opportunity to be involved with. One would think that if there were an investigative department that would be fair and include facts in an investi- gation, it would be EOD. Based on the EOD investigations I have reviewed, they are not fair or accurate and investigators do not even apply common sense in their investigative reports. There have been several investiga- tions from EOD that have come back with sustained allegations of employee miscon- duct that do not have facts to support the conclusion, include inaccurate information and, in one case, false information.
EOD is putting officers’ careers at risk with what I believe are some of the worst investigations I have ever had the opportunity to be involved with
As a City employee, you are required to participate in an interview with EOD when they call. You are also allowed to have a PLEA representative with you when you give that interview, regardless of whether you are a complainant, witness or subject of the investigation. Please make sure you call PLEA so that we can represent you during this process. EOD investigators do not record interviews and only take handwritten notes. Your PLEA representative will record the interviews (this has proven to be helpful when reviewing reports prepared by EOD). These reports are not like the ones you are used to seeing. They do not include the specific details we as police officers are used to including in our reports. In our review of audio recordings of recent interviews, PLEA has found inaccurate statements in the EOD report and challenged the conclusions. Currently, it appears we are having to challenge a majority of the EOD investigation due to serious factual inaccuracies.
The bigger issue is that Professional Standards Bureau (PSB) gets the EOD report with these incorrect conclusions and creates its misconduct investigation report based on EOD’s findings. That means the involved officer violated the City’s EEO standards and is therefore subject to an eight- to 24-hour suspension based off a bad EOD report. Our PSB has had a long- standing policy of not reinvestigating EEO complaints and accepting the findings regardless of the poor quality of the investigation and the incorrect information contained in the report. Recently, after PLEA met with executive management and brought these issues to their attention, we were advised PSB will begin investigating these complaints. Evidently, our Department leaders themselves are having issues with the quality of EOD’s investigations.
I wanted to bring this to your attention in case you get called down to EOD. You cannot trust they will do a good, accurate or fair investigation. If you are called to EOD at any time, regardless of what your involvement is in the investigation, call PLEA! We can assist you in the process and will record the interview (something they will not do). Since this is an administrative investigation, EOD makes it clear to say they only need a preponderance of evidence to sustain an allegation. The problem we have seen recently is there is no evidence to support the allegation, just personal opinions. I can’t emphasize how important it is to call PLEA for representation. Our MOU and ARS 38-1104 provide you with the right of representation, so take advantage of these rights that PLEA has fought hard to obtain for our members.
Kraftwerk, a German band known as innovators and pioneers in the genre of electronic music, including synh-pop, released their eighth album Computerwelt (Computer World) in May 1981. One of my first memories of hearing their song “Nummern (Numbers)” was on a late summer Friday night. I was listening to New York City radio station 92.3 WKTU while heading south on the Garden State Parkway toward the Jersey Shore town of Lavallette, where I was going to hang out for the weekend. (Snooki, JWoww and The Situation weren’t even born yet, and Pauly D was a year old.) The song’s lyrics, which are repeated in various combinations, consist of numbers ranging from one through eight spoken in eight different languages — German, Italian, Spanish, English, French, Japanese and Russian — while the musical track is pure synthesizer and drum machine.
I’m sure you’re asking yourself, “OK, Frank, where are you going with this one?” Well, let me tell ya. Over the past 12 years, dealing with the City when it comes to numbers is like listening to this song. Sometimes you understand what is being said, and at other times you scratch your head wondering, “What did I just hear?” For anyone who has been around for a while and works for the City, those of us here at the PLEA Office refer to this concept as “city math,” and there are usually two key times when it is used: during annual public budget hearings and at negotiations. In other words, initially City budget forecasts are always rosy. Those of us who reside in Phoenix read about it in our monthly water bills, hear about it via the City’s social media accounts and on Phoenix Channel 11. However, when budget meetings and negotiations roll around, suddenly there is doom and gloom about a lack of money and the perennial game of pitting public safety against community begins. Now that we find ourselves in the midst of the COVID-19 crisis, City Manager Ed Zuercher is already telling department heads to look into potentially cutting 25% of their respective department’s budgets to save money. One side effect of this current crisis is that you can plainly see what consists of “essential core services” as opposed to programs and amenities the City provides but aren’t essential to everyday operations. It also reinforces exactly which “essential employees” are absolutely necessary to provide these core services.
If you want a highly trained police department equipped with the latest technology, it costs money.
Let’s discuss City departments that pro- duce revenue, including those that can’t be spent outside those respective departments, and departments that charge other departments for services. The Water Services Department is considered an enterprise, meaning that not only does it provide the services of supplying clean drinking water and treating wastewater, but it also charges fees for those services, and those monies can only be used in that department to repair, improve and replace critical infrastructure. The Aviation Department functions the same way. When you take the numbers of people who travel through Sky Harbor Airport, it shows a direct daily economic impact of $106 million! Portions of that revenue are what allows them to continually improve and update runways and terminals and expand the billion-dollar people mover 1 mile west to the Rental Car Center. The Public Works Department, which includes Equipment Management, not only collects trash and recyclables, but is also responsible for maintaining the City’s fleet of vehicles, including our unmarked vehicles and marked patrol fleet. Public Works charges residents a monthly fee for trash collection, and they also charge the various City departments for vehicle repairs. The $300 oil change and $10,000 engine replace- ment for a Tahoe you may have heard of are byproducts of that process. Talk about a racket! Now as a disclaimer, I’m not putting this on the mechanics who do the work, because without them our fleet would not run; department heads make those decisions. The South Shop used to be a 24/7 operation, so if you needed a minor repair or tire change regardless of what time of day it was, it could be done without having to take a vehicle out of service and write it up. As part of cost savings, the City eliminated third and second shift, in that order, because it’s cheaper to pay a contract tow company to haul your vehicle back to the precinct so that you can swap out vehicles and the precinct mechanics can do the repairs during their normal shift. The Parks and Recreation Department would charge the Police Department for landscaping work done at the various precincts, substations and training facilities. A few years ago, in the midst of a budget crunch, one Academy staff member found out it was cheaper to outsource the work by hiring a contractor.
When it comes to the City’s annual budget, you will often hear that public safety accounts for the largest amount of general fund expenditures. This is a factual statement because it is one of city government’s primary functions. If you want a highly trained police department equipped with the latest technology, it costs money. Unfortunately, even when the Department asks for end-user input regarding choices of equipment or software to do our jobs, sometimes it’s as if nobody’s statements counted. A prime example is the disaster known as RMS (Records Management System), affec- tionately known as “our mess,” and for good #9767 reason. Despite concerns expressed from the beginning, the City went ahead and purchased it. When it finally came online in 2015, the City spent $30 million for the initial program and necessary network infrastructure to support it. Five years later, after the initial costs and spending thousands of dollars troubleshooting and trying to fix it, it’s still a disaster. When we screw up, we have to admit it, but why don’t we ever hear that from our City leaders when they make bad decisions?
What about sworn personnel numbers? While police staffing has been a sore issue due to the six-year hiring freeze, PLEA has aggressively challenged the City regarding sworn officer staffing. At our peak in 2008, the total number of sworn personnel on the Phoenix Police Department was 3,388, and our population was 1.579 million. Shortly after the Great Recession, City leadership decided to stop hiring police officers to save money, and we didn’t start hiring again until 2015. During that time, they also decided to defer pension debt, and in 2017 the Phoenix City Council approved a plan to extend the payment plan for pension debt out to 30 years from 20 years due to unfunded pension liabilities of $2.1 billion! From 2015–2018, 12,858 people took the written test to become Phoenix police officers, 5,788 turned in background packets and a total of 1,069 were hired. Keep in mind that City Manager Zuercher’s July 1, 2018, goal was to have a total of 3,125 sworn officers because it “was what we could afford” versus what we needed for a city of our population and geographical footprint. It should be noted that we
have yet to meet that goal for two straight years! At this time last year, our population was estimated to be 1.632 million, and we had a total of 2,897 sworn employees; 80 had to retire due to DROP and 635 were eligible to retire and could walk out the door at any given time. At the time I was writing this article, we had a total of 2,927 sworn employees; 50 have to retire this year due to DROP, more than 850 are eligible to retire and, to look at the bigger picture, more than 1,200 officers can retire within the next four to five years.
The kicker: Phoenix is the fifth-largest and fastest-growing city in the country, has an estimated population of 1.66 million and has estimated unfunded pension liabilities of approximately $2.5 billion. As time goes on with the current COVID-19 pandemic, it will be interesting to see what happens since projected revenues are already down. Many of the businesses, which generate those revenues through sales taxes, have been forced to close while others have limited hours. While I did mention a slow population growth over the past decade, there is massive development going on citywide. Raw desert and former farmland are being turned into residential and commercial property, and there are infill projects all over the city. At the beginning of February in the downtown area, there were 14 high-rises under construction, with nine more in the permitting process. Many of these are residential properties, and as they are completed, we should see a massive population spike, because we have heard most of them are sold out before the interior paint has dried. At some point in time, the residents who live in these communities and the businesses they will patronize will need police services, but at the rate the Phoenix Police Department is growing, they too will be forced to get in line and wait for us to respond.
The City of Phoenix and its management are required to provide certain core services to its citizens. Public safety, waste management, adequate streets and water services are some examples. These core services are why we pay taxes. Dictionary.com defines “core” in many ways, and one is “the central, innermost or most essential part of anything.” Based on this definition, the core services of the City are essential and need to be provided adequately regardless of cost.
For the past 12 years since the Great Recession, City leadership has treated pub- lic safety more like a peripheral entity rather than a core service. If the Police Department needs to replace worn, inefficient equipment, build new facilities or refurbish old ones or add manpower to provide a high level of service to our citizens, we typically are met with negative responses, including “we don’t have funding for that” or “to accomplish that, we would have to impose or raise taxes.” This is backward thinking. If you accept the premise that public safety is a core service, then the Police Department needs to be funded in such a way that it pro- vides our citizens the best customer service without making us out to be the bad guys, which has been the case every year during budget reviews. The public should consider it unacceptable to wait hours for an officer to respond to a traffic collision or to take a lower-priority report. Citizens have a right to have this core service be properly staffed and funded to provide quality service in a timely manner. As we have seen every year, because of the diminished manpower issue that we seem unable to overcome, the City continues to fall woefully short of where the level of service should be for a city of our population and geographical footprint.
If public safety truly is a core service, there should be no need to create a funding source to staff and supply equipment.
One only needs to look at the current situation in which we find ourselves with the COVID-19 pandemic. While police officers have been identified as “essential personnel” by not only the City but the federal government, our police officers are, for obvious reasons, not afforded the opportunity to telework like other City employees. In fact, as a general rule, the City chose to exclude us from a portion of the Families First Coronavirus Response Act (H.R. 6201), despite other cities, like Glendale, including its first responders. As much as City leaders would like to, it is difficult to define what we do as police officers as anything but a core service.
Why do we continually struggle year after year to keep public safety funded? One glaring example of the City’s misplaced priorities is and has been the light rail system. The vast majority of Phoenicians never wanted the light rail; it was initially forced on them. Last year, there was pushback from a group of business owners who will be affected by the southern expansion of the right of way along Central Avenue. Proposition 106, an attempt to end all future light rail expansion, made it on the ballot but was defeated by voters. More people than not ride the rail for free due to there being no solid system in place to ensure those who ride, pay. 2017 estimates we had received from the City indicated the cost to construct 1 mile of light rail was $150 million, and at the time it cost an estimated $3 million per mile per year to maintain. Maybe this is why Glendale made it known in no uncertain terms that it did not want the Phoenix light rail running through its city. Unlike Phoenix, Glendale seems to be smart enough to understand that the cost to maintain each mile would far outweigh any financial gain.
If public safety truly is a core service, there should be no need to create a funding source to staff and supply equipment. Save those “funding sources” for extra items in the community. It’s not that libraries, pools and retirement centers aren’t important, but if they are important to the community, then ask them to approve a funding source above and beyond what is earmarked in the general fund to provide for them.
The City has proven time and again it is a master at pitting citizens against cops and firefighters by forcing citizens every contract cycle to choose between public safety and amenities important to them. This was clearly evident in our 2019–2021 contract negotiations where we were told that while employees needed to be made whole after nearly a decade of concessions and no raises, the City also felt that the citizens needed to be made whole as well. In other words, as we’ve heard time and time again, “Well, we can give you a raise but if we do, we’ll have to shut down or reduce access to swimming pools, parks, libraries and senior centers.” Tactics like this are unacceptable because they do nothing more than drive a wedge between public safety and the citizens we serve by making us out to be the bad guy. When you combine this with the anti-police sentiment we’ve seen pushed by a vocal minority percentage of the community and shown by our mayor and the majority of our City Council, it’s a tough obstacle to overcome.
City management should change how it sees and prioritizes #8486 core services. If it did, you would not hear another word about manpower shortages and see police equipment on the back of tow trucks with an officer out of service.
Fund the core first; the rest is extra.
As always, if you have any questions or comments, I can be reached at the PLEA Office or by email at dkriplean@azplea.com.
The topic of the creation of a civilian review committee for our city is something that has been at the forefront of our minds at PLEA. In an attempt to better understand a model of review that would actually work for the benefit of our membership and the community, we have been in touch with numerous cities, police departments, police labor associations and political figures. We have found that no perfect model exists. Room for argument and accusation remains in many cities and departments that implemented civilian review, the complete opposite of what I am sure was the best intention of those communities. Is there a way to satisfy everyone?
When a person attends a City Council meeting, addresses the council from the podium and speaks for their community, they are speaking for their personal definition of community, not the entire population of a locality. I believe that “community” should be recognized as being made up of the people who live in and provide service to a populated area, all working together to create optimal living conditions. Is it possible to define community as a singular group? A city the size of Phoenix is diverse in race, religion, politics and interests, and people aligned with a single aspect of this diversity can influence the people of another aspect. Of course, the confidence we have in elected leadership is recognition of all moving parts when making an unbiased decision that should be for the welfare of all. It seems to be an almost impossible task, however, to make one decision that is good for everyone.
A diverse population makes a community of varied cultures and thought, and the community is governed by law that should be fair to all, allowing for “life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.” We will never see legislation that will be absolutely void of question or conflict. I have seen the legislative process firsthand, and I can say that influence, not intellect, is the best tool to have when pushing a bill to become law. A law can help one group of people and hurt another, and so can establishing any process based on influence and not truth.
A community benefiting plan made by one group will benefit only that group if the others have been excluded from the planning.
Some people may think that Phoenix is one community in which everyone has the same needs, but that would be wrong. We are different people with different ideas of how to live our lives, as it should be. Live and let live. But, regardless of your group, everyone needs to follow some rules that apply to all. Phoenix police officers are a group within the community of Phoenix. Our esteemed role in the community is to enforce laws and provide services that enhance the quality of life for all Phoenix residents, our community. The unique thing about the cop job is that we must enforce the same law to different people and cultures within our community, which can lead to misunderstanding if there is no familiarity with a certain law. Then there are those in the community who willingly break the law and prove harmful to others. When some of those lawbreakers are caught, they want to point fingers and try to do anything to deflect and disassociate themselves from their actions. This causes another hurdle in the justice system. Many police officers feel the community should also be held responsible when a false or misleading claim is made against an individual officer. Unfortunately, the Phoenix Police Department does nothing for an officer’s personal reputation, such as filing charges for a false complaint, even when the officer has been cleared of a false allegation. PLEA has tried to find a remedy for complaints of this type in the most recent and previous contracts. However, we’ve been told “it will have a chilling effect” on those trying to report misconduct. It should have a “chilling effect” when someone intends to file a blatantly false allegation! As it stands, as a police labor organization, it looks like we will need to find a way to change that on our end.
Existing systems can and should be improved, but when necessary. The integration of civilians in the review and discipline system the Phoenix Police Department has had for so many years works for us. Can the process be improved? Sure. But every group making up our community, even police officers, should be involved and given equal input and consideration.
No one person or governing body can say or decide what is in the best interest of a diverse group of almost two million people without reaching out to representatives of each group. A community benefiting plan made by one group will benefit only that group if the others have been excluded from the planning.
Being hopeful, we at PLEA are ready to see what the City Council actually thinks will benefit those members of the Phoenix community who enforce the law. This decision will last in the minds of the new generation of officers for their entire career.
Outside of work, I make no bones about the fact that I am a proud American, a second-generation descendant of immigrants who stands for the national anthem and places my right hand over my heart for the Pledge of Allegiance. Within a year of moving to a new city in a new state, I had a life-changing military deployment, immediately followed by a temporary duty assignment where I worked alongside and provided undercover detectives support in narcotics investigations. Those were part of a chain of events that led to my decision to leave a skilled trade in the private sector to pursue a career in law enforcement. This provided me with an opportunity to give back to and continue to serve my new home. My Army Oath of Enlistment and my police oath have similar clauses, including “protecting and defending the Constitution of the United States against all enemies, foreign and domestic,” which I firmly believe in to this day.
It’s no secret that PLEA has butted heads with City Councilmember Carlos Garcia, who represents District 8. You should know him by now. He’s an anti-police and open borders activist and director of Puente Arizona, who was arrested during the anti-SB 1070 protests several years ago and hijacked the City Council meeting in 2017 after the Trump rally. In 2019, he campaigned, ran for and won the current City Council seat he holds.
At the City Council meeting PLEA attended on June 19, 2019, I immediately noticed that Garcia didn’t place his hand over his heart for the Pledge of Allegiance and was also wearing a T-shirt with “End Police Brutality” on the front. A photo of him seated at the dais quickly went viral on social media and his history as an anti-rule-of-law activist became more evident in the weeks that followed, coming on the heels of the “shoplifting” and “Facebook” investigations. He demanded the involved officers be immediately terminated despite their due process rights, and began pushing the issue of having an independent civilian review board with the power to subpoena witnesses and terminate officers, despite a proven current process that has had civilians integrated into it for many years.
I don’t believe we have an issue with ‘police brutality’ in our city. I believe we have an issue with uninformed individuals.
Six months later, a #8255 body-worn camera video from a traffic stop in downtown Phoenix involving Garcia conducted by Arizona State University police surfaced on local television channels and websites. True to his colors, Garcia’s arrogance and blatant disregard for the law were clearly evident. First, he tried to argue with and question the officers, who were extremely professional and polite, about whether they had jurisdiction and then made it clear that he was going to see how to “get you guys out of here.” Based on these statements, he clearly doesn’t understand the concept of Arizona peace officer jurisdiction or the city’s mutual aid policy. He then made an issue about being asked for his Social Security number, which we as police officers normally do as part of a records check to confirm an individual’s identity. He later tried to explain to a reporter that he was “concerned for other people in the community who now have another police agency to worry about.” Garcia should know that safety and security of the community is one of the primary functions of government. In a city where an understaffed police department has been doing more with less for several years now, one would think a “leader” would appreciate having the extra assistance. Stats from 2018 available on ASU’s website show almost 11,600 students enrolled at its Downtown Phoenix campus. That’s a huge population increase, regardless of whether they commute or live on campus, and Phoenix Police Department patrol resources, including our Downtown Operations Unit, are already stretched thin in this rapidly growing part of the city.
On January 25, 2020, Garcia authored an op-ed piece that was published in the Arizona Republic, where he justified his reason for wearing the T-shirt. He wrote, “However, what I will not get used to or be complacent about is police brutality, regardless of being made fun of, critiqued or threatened in the form of hundreds of hate messages we receive weekly at my city council office. I will continue to demand police accountability and transparency.” He continues, “The impunity of the Phoenix Police Department has led us to become the deadliest police forces [sic] in the country,” and it “is not an opinion” but “based on empirical data of shootings, the infamous incidents caught on video and the millions of taxpayer dollars we have paid in lawsuit settlements.” After discussing the need to create an “independent investigative, community-driven civilian review board that assures the people of Phoenix that we care about fixing the problem,” he goes on to say, “It would give a clearer avenue for the survivors of police brutality to report it and an open process for how our city government will hold the police department accountable.”
Like most anti-police activists, Garcia mentions “police brutality” in his op-ed, along with “police violence,” which has been pontificated about ad nauseum at City Council meetings by Poder in Action, another activist group. “Police brutality” isn’t even listed in Black’s Law Dictionary, considered by most attorneys to be the Merriam-Webster of law reference books. It is largely a made-up term, used to refer to excessive force being used to effect an arrest. As a 25-year veteran of the Phoenix Police Department, I don’t believe we have an issue with “police brutality” in our city. I believe we have an issue with uninformed individuals like Garcia and the groups he is affiliated with.
U.S. constitutional case law, Arizona Revised Statutes and Phoenix Police Department policy allow force, up to and including deadly force, to be legally used by officers in the performance of their duties. Cases like Tennessee v. Garner and Graham v. Connor are the cornerstone cases used to judge police use of force. In Graham v. Connor, U.S. Supreme Court Justice William Rehnquist stated in the court’s ruling, “The ‘reasonableness’ of a particular use of force must be judged from the perspective of a reasonable officer on the scene, rather than with the 20/20 vision of hindsight. The calculus of reasonableness must embody allowance for the fact that police officers are often forced to make split-second judgments — in circumstances that are tense, uncertain and rapidly evolving —about the amount of force that is necessary in a particular situation. The test of reasonableness is not capable of precise definition or mechanical application.” Having said that, using force to effect an arrest of an individual, especially someone high on drugs or determined not to go back to prison who is actively resisting arrest, never looks good. When officers confront violent, out-of-control suspects who put others at risk of serious injury or death, we must match or exceed their force levels to gain control of them. Some of the techniques that we are trained to use could very well be perceived as violence, but they are legally justified.
Proponents of the “police brutality” myth often like to say we take advantage of and use the use-of-force laws we operate under to legitimize our actions. Garcia’s comments referring to us as the “deadliest police force in the country” are a direct reference to a record 44 officer-involved shootings in 2018, where 22 criminal suspects died. Thirty-five shootings involved suspects with guns, including incidents where the suspect shot civilians or pointed a firearm at and/or shot at our officers, four suspects were armed with knives and one was armed with a dangerous instrument. He fails to accept the fact those shootings were all legally justified under #9889 Arizona Revised Statute 13-901, which is why none of our officers were indicted for their actions. He also fails to understand or accept that no officer ever wants or looks forward to using deadly force to resolve an incident, and for those who do, it is a decision they will live with for the rest of their lives. Sadly, a consequence of resorting to deadly force is officers who have suffered mentally and emotionally and have taken their own lives.
As a public servant, I must abide by the law and Department and City rules and regulations, including those governing what I can say and do, on and off duty. (Can you say, “Facebook investigation”?) Policy dictates what I can wear during the course of my duties, and if I were still in patrol, I would have to follow policy regarding operation of Department vehicles and what items I’m allowed to have on my uniform. While it’s bad enough that several years ago I got a talking-to from a now-retired assistant chief about the 9/11 memorial pin I had on my uniform while attending an award ceremony, I can’t place a thin blue line flag decal on any City-issued equipment, including a marked patrol vehicle, or wear one on my uniform. I’m not allowed to speak in a negative manner about the City or the Department, and I must conduct myself in a professional manner at all times. Violating any of these policies may potentially lead to a PSB investigation, followed by a trip to the Disciplinary Review Board.
While Garcia is an elected official, he is also a public servant, but he bends the rules to suit his agenda. His focus should be on serving all residents of Phoenix, which includes a number of the rank-and-file Phoenix police officers PLEA represents — not a select demographic or what I would call a special interest group, which he clearly lays out in his own words. Imagine if the men and women of the Phoenix Police Department did that?
Slow down, wear your vest, stop advising on calls and stay safe!
It is never a shock to any of us when we get hurt on the job. We know very well the hazards of our career choice. It is rare to hear of an officer who was able to navigate a 20-plus-year career without fi ling a workers’ compensation claim. For those of us who were not as fortunate, here are some things to consider.
No matter how minor the injury, report it as soon as reasonably possible. If the injury does not require medical treatment, simply complete a memo detailing what occurred and submit it to your supervisor. It will remain in your division/bureau/precinct file for one year. During that time, if the injury progresses so that medical treatment becomes necessary, an industrial packet will be completed.
Injuries that require medical treatment, obviously, will have an associated industrial packet filled out immediately.
My hope is that none of you have to navigate the workers’ compensation waters. e reality is that many, if not most, of you will.
I want to dispel an old wives’ tale that I believed to be true for most of my career — the idea that when you get injured you must go to Concentra one time. I, like most of you, heard this over and over from co-workers and supervisors. It wasn’t until I began working daily with injured colleagues that I found that it was not the case. The City does reserve the right to have you evaluated by a medical professional of its choosing if it believes your doctor’s assessment or treatment plan seems out of whack; otherwise, you are free to choose the doctor you trust most with your care and recovery. Remember, once you see a doctor for a second time, they become your doctor of record. If you decide later that you want a different health provider, you must first seek approval from CCMSI — the third-party administrator of the City’s workers’ compensation program — before seeing them.
Another thing to be keenly aware of is the timeline set forth in Arizona Revised Statutes (ARS) for reporting an injury. ARS §23-1061 states that you have one year to file a claim for an injury. “The time for filing a compensation claim begins to run when the injury becomes manifest or when the claimant knows or in the exercise of reasonable diligence should know that the claimant has sustained a compensable injury.”
In other words, if symptoms or diagnosis of an injury do not manifest or occur for many years, it would still be able to be claimed. The date of diagnosis or onset of symptoms becomes the date of the injury. This is common with PTSD injuries.
Something to be very cognizant of is your work status document. Your doctor will be required to complete this document for the City. If your doctor wants you to recuperate at home, that needs to be reflected with the words “no duty” on it. Anything other than “no duty” is confirming your ability to work a modified assignment, aka transitional duty. If your doctor prescribes narcotic painkillers, do not assume that you will be able to stay home due to the “do not drive” advisement on the prescription bottle. As ludicrous as it sounds, the City may require you to report to work, even under the influence of a prescription narcotic. The City, time and time again, has told injured employees to get a ride from a family, friend, Uber or even a city bus to get to work. Remember, “no duty” is a key phrase.
Another important aspect of an industrial injury is that each covered #9379 injury has 2,080 hours (the equivalent of one year) attached to it. What this means is that if you are unable to work because of the injury, workers’ compensation pays a portion of your salary and the City will supplement the remaining portion for the duration of the injury, or up to 2,080 hours. The 2,080 hours also covers follow-up appointments and any physical therapy that is prescribed. If you exhaust that bank and continue to need time off for appointments, you will have to use BI, BV or BC time. If you can work light duty, I would encourage you to take advantage of it, even if it is in callback, to preserve that bank of hours. You may need to tap into it later if the claim needs to be reopened.
If you receive a bill for services rendered during this process, whether it is a doctor’s bill, ambulance bill or emergency room bill, it is of the utmost importance that you call your adjustor, City Safety staff or me so we can ensure that the “bill to” gets changed from your name to the City of Phoenix. We have had several instances where this has not occurred, and officers have thrown away the bill with the assumption, “It’s workers’ comp, I don’t need to worry about this.” In such cases, the bills have ended up in collections and, subsequently, on individual credit reports. Understandably, this is very frustrating for the officer. The City typically receives a discount on the bill if it is paid within 15 days, so the sooner they know about it, the better it is.
My hope is that none of you have to navigate the workers’ compensation waters. The reality is that many, if not most, of you will. Issues will arise, but know that PLEA will help you any way we can.
This article is only intended to cover the highlights of the workers’ compensation process. Operations Orders 3.7.3 explains the process at length. If you ever have any questions, please feel free to contact Tracy Hamilton in the city safety department at (602) 534-9530 or by email at tracy.hamilton@phoenix.gov. You may also contact me for assistance. I am always available at the PLEA office or by email at dkriplean@azplea.com.