WRTV's Call 6 reports on a Beech Grove police officer who earned $71,000 in 2015 has called in sick every day since October 30. Instead of showing up to his taxpayer-paid job, Capt. David Heiniger has been working a second job as a hospital security officer. The 25-year veteran has been using sick days and accumulated vacation time to get paid for sick days which now total 115 days.
Capt. Heiniger needs to stay employed with the police department until July 6 in order to max out his retirement benefit. If he had retired on October 30, he could have only claimed half of his accumulated sick days in one lump sum payment. By remaining on the payroll and just calling in sick, Capt. Heiniger can get paid in full for all of his accumulated six days. Heiniger declined Call 6's invitation to comment for the story. It's just another example of exploitative public employees taken taxpayers for a ride.
UPDATE: A day after this report first aired, Capt. Heiniger has tendered his resignation. Additionally, the City's attorney says the City's policy will likely be amended to clarify that an employee may not work a second job while claiming sick days.
24 comments:
Officers are forced to work on their scheduled days off and forego scheduled vacations with families due to severe officer shortages-not on a temporary basis, but for years.
The accumulation of unused days off, as in the Beach Grove example given, is the consequence of chronic officer shortages. Every day, on almost every shift, in every district, command staff begs off duty officers to come in on days off or work overtime. Not having enough officers to fill needed slots puts them and the public at great risk. There aren't enough officers patrolling neighborhoods, emergency response times suffer, they become overtired and over stressed. No surprise that not every encounter with a police officer is an "Officer Friendly" one. We shouldn't be shocked when tragic errors in judgment are made by officers in threatening situations.
This is what happens when mayors serve two terms before allowing funding for desperately needed police officer recruit classes. Don't blame officers for taking what should have been given to them when it was most needed-throughout their weeks, months and years of service.
Christine, You should ask IMPD's leadership why it places good police officers on paid administrative leave for months at a time for bogus reasons while coddling problem officers if there's a shortage of officers.
Thank you Gary 8:39. The comment previous to your reply sure seemed to me to be a professional political excuse.
I understand what Christine is saying about the staffing problems and how it impacts rank-and-file officers, but in the case of IMPD, these are often self-inflicted problems. They've got too many captains, deputy chiefs and other "bosses" who have too much time on their hands to create mischief instead of doing their best to run an efficient police force.
Gary: The criticisms of allocation of staff resources placed in administrative positions vs. on the street officer duty, the ueber punishment of slight infractions committed by some solid officers vs. eyes closed of favored ones, certainly needs deeper scrutiny and action.
A top heavy administration may contribute to a lack of enough boots on the ground officers. It doesn't account for the severity level of the officer shortage. Consider that IMPD North District officers cover an area and population the size of Ft. Wayne-with staff well below the number of Ft.Wayne police department.
There are many reasons why at any given time, on any given day the shortage in coverage is even worse than it should be. Pulling officers from their patrol duty in outlying neighborhoods on an almost daily basis to work traffic and security details for special events Downtown is just one(without reimbursement of public safety resources from event sponsors) . However and wherever officers are used can be improved upon. The long term administration refusal to supplant the increasing number of eligible retirees with new recruits remains the true, underlying reason for insufficient numbers of officers needed to cover Marion County. Until the recruiting of needed numbers of new officers and the holding of ongoing training becomes a reality, the community will suffer many undesirable consequences. Officers "gaming the system" to use up long overdue time off days is a less serious consequence than not having a police officer available to come to your rescue when needed.
And Ballard and the state legislature inflicted great harm on this city when they changed state law to block the city from collecting a payment-in-lieu-of-taxes from the CIB to help pay for those added law enforcement costs for all of the special events taking place downtown at the CIB's facilities. The CIB should be contributing at least $5 million annually to help offset those costs.
Actually I do not mind this Officer taking advantage of the system. I compare this to long running scam to build, maintain and subsidize the Pacers and Colts and the officers taking the advantage of the system is chicken feed.
Oh yeah, yeah Police Department expenses come out of a different pocket than the Colts and Pacers. However the source of the respective funds all comes from the Tax Payers. The Republicrat Party never seems to object to this diversion of taxes into the pockets of the Colts and Pacers. Bags full of tax dollars are showered on the Pacers and Colts.
You all realize that simply paying officers for 100% of their sick days would fix this right?
Christine, maybe ending the failed war on drugs would free up some resources so all us damsels in distress can be rescued by Officer Friendly?
http://www.thewire.com/national/2012/10/chart-says-war-drugs-isnt-working/57913/
I agree with you on many issues Gary, but not this one. I know many people who have taken PTO the last few months before retirement because they had a boat load of sick days saved up. Some intentionally saved PTO but most just worked hard and never took much time off. Public and private sector employers, blue and white collar jobs.
And as Ms. Scales noted - many officers are banking time because they are guilted into working instead of taking a vacation day, and presumably because they actually give a damn about the city. Indy spends over $100M every year on TIF debt service but we can't fund basic city services like adequately staffing police, fixing sidewalks or paving streets (outside the mile square that is). That's the real issue here.
Private sector employers don't allow their employees to bank sick days. You're afforded so many each year and if you don't use them, you lose them. Public sector employers have been more generous on allowing their employees to bank sick days. Many governmental entities have been hit hard by this practice. IMPD, for example, has to pay for all of those accumulated sick days every time an officer retires. As a consequence, the hiring of new officers is often delayed because of the costs they are carrying to pay retired police officers for accumulated sick and vacation days. The public sector should adopt the same practices most private sector employees adopt and this wouldn't be an issue. More importantly, the practice of allowing banked sick days means some employees show up for work when they should have stayed home, spreading their germs to their co-workers and making them sick. We don't want police officers showing up for work and downing heavy doses of cough medicine and other over-the-counter drugs to make it through the day.
I work in healthcare, and have called in sick only one day in over seven years. I lose my unused sick days every year, as we cannot bank them.
My job is extremely stressful and life-and-death decisions are made on a daily, if not hourly, basis.
Under the NFL contract with the Colts it is a requirement for the city to provide a number specific 200 officers at each Colts' game. Due to a lack of available policemen, IMPD must contract with private entities to make up the difference. It would seem that this level of staffing is overkill and a taxpayer drain considering overtime and paying for outside contracting not to mention stress on the department. Since we have found that sports contracts are renegotiable, though never in the public's favor, our resident owner may want to look into this. And since the CIB supposedly runs the stadium, let them take the extra policing cost from their budget.
Re: anon 2:38, since the only money the CIB receives is taxpayer money they'll just increase their budget to cover the cost of officers. Like everything else associated with the CIB we still lose.
That is a clear example of abuse of the system and, perhaps, felony Ghost Employment. I tender to you that if he were not actually sick (with medical documentation) and he collects pay while REFUSING TO WORK that he was committing the very definition of the crime: A Person employed by a government entity, who, knowing the person has not been assigned any duties to perform for the entity commits Ghost Employment, a class 6 felony."
Paid sick leave is a true benefit, but how can that municipality allow him to perform gainful extra employment when he is refusing to work for the municipality???
Why wouldn't they demand proof of illness and medical treatment from a medical person? That is just common sense. Even hourly workers who do not get paid sick leave have to often bring in a medical note to document they were actually sick in order to retain their employment.
I think a Grand Jury should review this.
According to the Call 6 report, the officer had a statement from his doctor excusing him from work. That doesn't explain why he was able to work the other security job but not his regular job.
Gary, I think that doctor needs to testify before the Grand Jury. -And perhaps the Medical Licensing Board?
the current system that impd has does not allow you to accrue sick days and bank them. there are some veterans with 20+ years on that are on an old system that allowed you to bank sick time that you did not use and you could cash those in at retirement (as i understand it).
most officers in the last 20 years or so are on the new system. 90 sick days a year. resets every year.
some of the old timers (regrettably) converted to the new system as well.
http://www.indy.gov/eGov/City/DPS/IMPD/Employment/Sworn/Pages/benefits.aspx
also, impd does not allow officers to work part time jobs if they have called in sick.
90 sick days per year?? Crap I only get FIVE!!!!
Not all employers flush PTO and companies that merged vacation time with sick leave creating PTO then giving a specified number of hours to an employee PTO bank per payroll, up to a cap if set, becomes the legal equivalent to pay.
In our company using this system we must legally pay out PTO on separation because it was earned. To reduce financial exposure there's a maximum accrual cap which also encourages employees to take their vacation. We don't distinguish between the 2 uses in this system other than requiring vacation be scheduled 30 days in advance. My point, though, is that the blanket statement that pto is flushed is not true. There are multiple plans out there in the corporate world designed to suit specific corporate, administrative or cultural goals.
The $12,000,000 in payments to attorneys and consultants for Mayor Ballard's proposed Criminal Justice Center would have provided funding for many more police officers...
While you are looking into police considering their sick days as potential vacation days due to them, suggest you also look at teachers.......same - same......called mental health days by some. It's an overall attitude of many, many people in our entire culture.
why not simply put addendum in that specifies that taking more than 2 consecutive sick days requires doctor note. on top of this limit the consecutive sick day taken to 7. anything after is vacation.
Can I ask a question? What amount of vacation are police officers given a year? We have a 'use or lose it' for the year and sick time caps out at 300 and some odd hours.
I walk out the door, they have to pay me for the vacation they owe and I lose all sick time. I'm ok with that. I could count on one hand how many days I have called in sick so I have sick time dropping off as I have hit the limit.
In fact they changed it so vacation can no longer accumulate as the police have now and some people lost. you have to cut the head off the dragon at some point. What does the union agreement say??
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