Retired cop to get outstanding pension benefits
A retired police officer will receive the balance of his pension and gratuity, along with vindicatory damages, after his injury leave was wrongly classified and the unlawful recovery of his pension benefits.
Justice Kevin Ramcharan ordered the Commissioner of Police and Attorney General to pay retired Sgt Wrenwick Theophilus $217,902.13 representing the balance of his pension and gratuity, and $50,000 in vindicatory damages.
The judge found the TTPS acted unreasonably when it reclassified decades of approved injury leave as leave without pay, resulting in more than $217,000 being deducted from Theophilus’s retirement benefits.
Theophilus, who served for more than 30 years, joined the service on March 7, 1988, and retired at the rank of sergeant on November 13, 2022.
He sustained a gunshot wound to his left knee while on duty on April 5, 1994, and later suffered additional injuries in a road traffic accident on November 25, 2000, which left him with a permanent partial disability of 20 per cent.
Over the years, the increasing severity of his injuries required him to submit medical certificates, which the Commissioner of Police processed as paid injury leave under Regulation 94 of the Police Service Regulations.
According to court documents, Theophilus was never assessed or discharged by a medical board, and the commissioner consistently approved his injury leave based on medical evidence.
However, by letter dated October 23, 2019, then-police commissioner Gary Griffith directed that Theophilus’s sick leave records be reclassified. Leave previously approved as injury leave was redesignated as absent without pay, extended sick leave without pay, or vacation leave.
In April 2022, a TTPS legal officer, by letter, asserted that Theophilus had not demonstrated that his lower back injury was related to the 2000 accident.
More than a year later, on December 13, 2023, the TTPS notified Theophilus that he owed government $217,902.13 in overpaid salary and allowances from 1994 to 2018. When he retired, that full amount was deducted from his pension and gratuity.
Theophilus filed a constitutional motion alleging the TTPS violated his fundamental rights under section 4(a) of the Constitution by depriving him of property through an unlawful reclassification of his injury leave.
In his ruling, Ramcharan said the central issue was the interpretation of Regulation 94 of the Police Service Regulations and a 2014 memorandum issued by the Chief Personnel Officer.
He held that Regulation 94 does not require a medical board to determine medical fitness unless an officer is being discharged, and that the Commissioner of Police must exercise discretion reasonably, guided by medical evidence.
Ramcharan also found no evidence that the commissioner possessed any medical basis to conclude that Theophilus’s applications for leave were unrelated to his job-related injuries. He ruled that the commissioner erred by relying on the 2014 CPO memorandum for leave applications made in 2003 and affirmed that the officer’s leave was connected to injuries sustained while on duty.
The judge concluded that the police service’s decision to reclassify the leave as unpaid was unreasonable, irrational, and unlawful.
Attorneys from the firm Martin George and Company represented Theophilus.
BY: JADA LOUTOO
Retired cop to get outstanding pension benefits
