PENSION BOARD LOWER S DISABILITY PAY OUTS FOR WHISTLEBLOWER COP

Does the code of silence have psychological side effects? The Chicago Police Pension Board doesn’t think so, according to filings in a dispute over disability payments for whistleblower cop Shannon Spalding.

Doctors selected by the Pension Board have ruled that Spalding developed post- traumatic stress disorder, caused by the stress heaped on her after a supervisor revealed she was working with the FBI on an investigation of narcotics officer Ronald Watts.

The PTSD diagnosis has kept Spalding off the job since 2013, collecting a 50 percent salary for “ordinary” disability. Spalding maintains she’s entitled to a 75 percent “act of duty” disability because her undercover work in the Watts investigation is what made it impossible for her to continue her job as a police officer.

Spalding claims a superior officer outed her and her partner, Officer Daniel Echeverria, as “rats” within the narcotics unit even before the FBI closed out the Watts investigation, and that supervisors harassed them for years afterward — even after Watts pleaded guilty to stealing money from a federal informant.

Spalding and Echeverria sued the department over the abuse, settling the case for $ 2 million this spring. Echeverria has continued on the job, but Spalding said she was sidelined by panic attacks and depression caused by the harassment from her fellow cops.

The pension board says that harassment — which it characterizes as “disputes with management or generalized stress of being a police officer” — is the cause of her stress, not the kind of specific “special risk” of her work as a cop that would qualify her for duty disability. Spalding has appealed that decision and will take the case to Cook County Circuit Court this week.

Spalding’s lawyer, Jerry Marconi, scoffs at the notion that the pressure Spalding was under was just the typical stress of a Chicago cop. Spalding had crossed Watts and his crew, who were suspected of violent retaliation against the gang members and project residents they were shaking down, and after Watts’ conviction, one of Spalding’s supervisors allegedly told other cops in her unit not to back her up on calls.

“The idea that this is just the regular stress of doing police work is just absurd,” Marconi said.

“THE IDEA THAT THIS IS JUST THE REGULAR STRESS OF DOING POLICE WORK IS JUST ABSURD.” JERRY MARCONI, Shannon Spalding’s attorney