A pain in the brass
Top cops who retired amid probe want vacation, OT
Five police officials who abruptly retired last year amid a corruption probe are griping that they were pressured into hanging it up, costing them tens of thousands of dollars in accrued vacation time and overtime.
The officers filed a grievance with the city just weeks after they left the department.
The cops — NYPD Inspector Peter DeBlasio and Deputy Chiefs Andrew Capul, Eric Rodriguez, John Sprague and David Colon — had been on tap to get all of their unused vacation and comp time, sources said. But days after they were warned to retire, NYPD Chief of Internal Affairs Joseph Reznick and the department’s commissioner on legal matters, Larry Byrne, told them that if they didn’t waive their accrued time, they would be demoted to captain, thus pull in lower pay, sources said.
They were told that if they went away quietly, they wouldn’t face disciplinary charges and remain in “good standing,’’ meaning they could keep their guns after retirement to still work security jobs, sources said.
The arm-twisting cost the five cops huge payouts, said Harry Greenberg, a lawyer for the Captains Endowment Association.
“They were not brought up on charges, not one of them,” said Greenberg, who filed the officers’ grievance with the city Office of Labor Relations.
“They left in good standing. They had hundreds of hours, maybe thousands of hours in unused vacation and comp time. They didn’t get paid like they should have.”
A police source seethed, “To get to retire and keep their pension while potentially facing criminal charges, they should be counting their blessings and stop complaining.
“I would just suck it up . . . and be praying that I’m not going to jail.’’
On Sunday, news broke that NYPD Deputy Inspector Mike Endall, whose division is a prime target of the probe (inset), landed an even better retirement deal.
Endall, the former head of the department’s scandal-plagued gun-licensing division, is expected to receive a pension equal to at least half of his annual salary of $177,941.
He was allowed to retire without any clawback because while he may have been guilty of very poor supervision, there is no proof he violated policy, NYPD sources said.