Fewer L.A. Police Officers Apply for Stress Pensions, and Fewer Collect

Jimmy Wade Pearson claims that it was the stress of being a police officer that caused him to stage a phony terrorist attack on a Turkish team Olympic bus at the close of the 1984 Summer Games.

Desperate for a transfer out of the Metro Division, he admitted planting a bomb-like device on the athletes’ bus so that he could impress his superiors by discovering and removing it.

Suspended from the force and sentenced to probation, Pearson, 41, said he is now now putting his life back on “a steady course” by working as a scuba diving instructor and writing a book.

But he also contends that because his stress was work-related, he is entitled to a lifetime tax-free disability pension amounting to a minimum of about $1,500 a month, plus cost-of-living increases.

The Los Angeles Board of Pension Commissioners has yet to act on Pearson’s stress claim. It is one of 20 applications for stress-related disabilities that were filed last year by police officers seeking early retirement.

While many city officials are pleased that the number of applications for stress pensions has dropped dramatically from previous years, the Pearson case indicates that some of the applications will nevertheless stir controversy.

In Pearson’s case, as with all disability applications, the pension commissioners must award Pearson a pension if they find that he is physically or mentally disabled from performing even light-duty police work and that his disability is job-related--as opposed to being caused by extracurricular activities or a pre-existing physical or mental disorder.

During the last year, observers say, the pension commission has gotten tough on stress applications filed by officers who have been fired from the department or disciplined.

“They (commissioners) have been really tight on these and they didn’t used to be,” said Lt. Ed Gagnon, the Police Department’s medical liaison officer.

Denying an officer a pension can be risky for the commission. A denial is likely to be appealed to the Superior Court, where judges may overrule the decision after reviewing the evidence.

Nevertheless, the commission denied 57% of the stress claims it heard last year, contrasted with a 20% denial rate in 1984.

One of the most controversial cases that was denied involved Michael Rothmiller, 35, a former undercover organized crime detective who resigned from the department in 1983 rather than face a police Board of Rights hearing on 17 counts of misconduct.

As with other complicated and controversial cases, the commission hired a professional hearing examiner to make a recommendation on Rothmiller’s pension bid.

In March, hearing examiner Mary Jo Curwen concluded in a report that Rothmiller “has attempted to portray both his physical and emotional problems in an exaggerated manner” and that his pension application should be denied. In summary, Curwen stated that Rothmiller’s trouble with the department began in about July, 1982, when he was passed over for a promotion and was involved in an undercover investigation that was unexpectedly canceled.

“Whether in jest or seriously,” Curwen wrote, “he (Rothmiller) commented at that time to his partner to the effect that this incident would cause him to become stressed out so he would get a stress pension.”

The next month, Rothmiller was driving an unmarked police car which was fired upon six times and then crashed, injuring him slightly. Rothmiller claimed that he had been the target of an ambush by somebody connected with one of his investigations.

Police officials, however, became skeptical of his account, noting that physical injuries he claimed to have sustained in the crash were inconsistent with his activities a month later while vacationing in Hawaii. There, he was observed surf fishing, snorkeling, exercising, going on a catamaran sailing trip and getting on and off airplanes.

After an investigation, police officials came to believe that Rothmiller had faked the ambush to win undeserved disability benefits. He was charged in July, 1983, with 17 counts of misconduct arising from his account of the shooting incident, as well as improperly going undercover to infiltrate a federal organized crime investigation.

About the time he was charged, Rothmiller amended his disability claim to include stress. He resigned from the department rather than face a police trial board. And he provided testimony for the American Civil Liberties Union, which was suing the Police Department for illegal spying, to the effect that he had been ordered by superiors to dig up information on the sex lives of two unidentified public officials.

The Board of Pension Commissioners, composed of five citizens and two union officials, reviewed the Rothmiller file and voted in July, 1985, to adopt the hearing examiner’s recommendation denying Rothmiller a stress pension.

But the case is not over yet. Rothmiller, like many of the other officers whose stress pensions were denied during the last year, has filed a lawsuit challenging the commission’s decision.

His attorney, Mary Ann Healy, said the hearing examiner focused on the wrong issues and ignored medical reports supplied by doctors hired by the Department of Pensions.

A tenacious and skilled advocate, Healy said she is confident that a judge, after reviewing the five-volume file of exhibits, will overrule the pension commission and give Rothmiller his pension.