Arizona Ex-Police Officer on Medical Disability Runs Triathlons

From the “If you did this, not
only would you be facing jail time but your state’s attorney
general would send out a press release about it” files, a Mesa,
Ariz., police officer who is receiving monthly worker’s
compensation checks and successfully arranged for a medical
retirement is racing in triathlons.

CBS 5 in Arizona
tracked down the maddening and maddeningly common governmental
pension bureaucratic process that allows public employees to
enhance their own retirements by claiming injuries and medical
problems that don’t pass the smell test:

One of the elite athletes who crossed the finish line in the
grueling Ironman Arizona last November is 49-year-old Audrey
Glemba.

She’s a medically-retired police officer who collects a worker’s
compensation check every month for an injury she said prevented her
from doing her job.

A review of Glemba’s records reveal she suffered a back and knee
injury in 1995 during a training exercise with the Mesa Police
Department.

So, according to CBS 5, she worked and raced in dozens of
events, including several triathlons, for several years subsequent
to this injury. Then in 2007 she was investigated by the police
over some inappropriate behavior:

The 2007 internal affairs investigation revealed Glemba and
members of the squad she supervised were taking photos of
themselves, the homeless and disabled, which they ridiculed with
disparaging and offensive remarks.

“They were posting all of that various photographs on walls in
different montages, and they’d make captions about who they were or
what they were doing,” said [Mesa Police Detective Steve]
Berry.

The investigation ended when Glemba was fired in December of
2008.

So after she was fired, she appealed. She was briefly
reinstated, long enough for the pension board to rule that she was
medically unable to perform the tasks of her job, and then her
medical retirement was approved. And then she left again. In
addition, she’s getting $500 a month in worker’s compensation for
her injuries in addition to her medical retirement. So that’s a
pretty nice chain of events for Glemba. The television station says
that the pension board did know she was involved in these athletic
competitions prior to approving her medical retirement.

Read or watch the full piece
here.