Retired from Tampa Police in ’83, man still fighting for pension
TAMPA — Rufus Lewis’ portrait hangs in the lobby of the police headquarters downtown. The city’s website celebrates the bravery he and three other Black officers displayed. Mayor Jane Castor credits the actions of the “Fearless Four” — suing the city for discrimination in 1974, and winning — with opening doors that made her own advancement in the police department possible.
Yet even as the city paid homage to his legacy during Black History Month, Lewis said it worked tirelessly to deny him something far more fundamental: his full pension.
Missing from the city’s tributes was any mention that his career was cut short. Lewis was injured playing basketball while representing the Tampa Police Department, part of a team organized to build community trust.
When problems with the veins in his legs persisted, the department placed him on unpaid leave, he said, forcing him into early retirement.
The city initially categorized his injury as occurring in the line of duty. The team, after all, was considered an important recruiting tool and a way to connect with younger residents and people of color.
The pension board later disagreed, concluding that the basketball games were not an official job duty and effectively slashing his pension in half.
Today, he says receives $1,968 monthly, after cost of living adjustments throughout the years.
Lewis believes racism played a role. One board member, for example, would later abruptly retire from the department to avoid being fired for using a racial slur.
The four decades since Lewis’ retirement have brought only dashed hopes and continuous worry that he’s one unexpected bill from financial ruin.
“I can barely meet my obligations,” Lewis said recently in the living room of his Tampa home he shares with his wife and grandson, its walls adorned with medals and certificates from his 15 years on the force.
“To not be paid your fair share, when you’ve served your community and are celebrated by your community?” he said. “That’s heartbreaking.”
Lewis, who grew up in St. Petersburg, joined the Tampa police in 1967 at the height of the civil rights movement and its subsequent backlash. Racist slurs squawked through police radios and hateful cartoons tarnished the department’s bathroom stalls. Though signs indicating separate restrooms and water fountains for Black people had been removed, he recognized an unwritten rule that segregation still applied.
The Fearless Four filed a complaint with the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission in 1974 against the department. Discrimination, the foursome argued, kept doors shut for Black officers who wanted to rise through the ranks.
“Black officers had to be twice as good just to be considered average,” said Clarence Nathan, one of the Fearless Four.
In 1976, the foursome won. The city implemented new hiring and promotion practices in response.
While the Fearless Four’s contributions are now heralded for stirring positive change throughout city government, Lewis says his reputation at the time put a target on his back.
“It was common knowledge that if you were an officer of color, you should stay away from Rufus Lewis,” said friend and retired Tampa police captain Sam Jones, who is Black. “You did not want to be associated with him. He was viewed as trouble.” Then came an evening in January 1980. Lewis was playing basketball at Hillsborough High School in a city league game.
Lewis, by then a sergeant, loved slipping on his police jersey and stepping onto the court. He loved connecting with spectators not accustomed to seeing someone who looked like them in uniform. The Police Department, he said, encouraged officers to participate, allowing them to miss patrol duties.
But during the game, he felt a “snap” as he went for a rebound. His left leg gave way. After surgery and several months of rehabilitation, Lewis returned to full duty.
Still, his left calf and ankle would swell. The pain grew whenever he stood too long.
In 1982, while driving his police cruiser, the pain recurred.
He was handed a Police Department injury report to complete that described his post-thrombotic syndrome, blood clotting, as not occurring in the line of duty. He refused to sign.
The basketball game had not taken place on police premises or during his regular duty hours, but the department recruited officers to join the “community relations activity,” Lewis and Jones said. Lewis was in charge of scheduling games, a task he often did on duty.
Jones, who also played in the league, remembered a time when his boss found out he’d missed a game and the team had lost.
“I don’t care what’s going on or if he is supposed to be on patrol,” Jones recalled his boss saying, “if a city league game is scheduled, Jones will be playing.”
Less than a year after Lewis’ pain and swelling returned, the state Department of Labor and Employment Security ruled that his injury did indeed count as occurring in the line of duty.
About a week later, Lewis, still in pain and off work, asked the board of the Tampa Firefighters and Police Officers Pension Fund to classify his injury as such.
All but one member of the board voted to deny Lewis’ request. In a memo to the
board, then-police Chief Robert Smith recommended the injury be classified as non-job related.
A few weeks later, Lewis underwent surgery on his leg. “I do not feel that he will be able to return to full duty,” his doctor wrote to the Police Department soon after.
Lewis still wanted to work for the department. For all of its ills, he said, he still believed in the mission that had led him to want to be an officer: to help his community.
But that summer, Lewis was placed on unpaid leave. He’d been receiving workers compensation and a supplemental check from the city while he tried to recover. Those benefits suddenly ceased. He says he was threatened with demotion.
“Please,” he wrote to the chief, “tell me why I am being treated differently.”
Seeing no way forward, he filed for an in-the-lineof-duty disability pension, which would have entitled him to 65% of his final year’s pay annually. But the pension board again reiterated that participating in the basketball team was not an official job duty.
(The Police Department now requires officers engaging in sporting events to sign an injury waiver. Lewis said
he had to sign no such record decades ago.)
He was granted a non-line of duty disability pension, worth about half.
“If Rufus had been shot in the line of duty they still would have struggled with giving him his due,” Jones told the Times.
Relief came briefly in 1985. Lewis successfully sued the city, which was ordered to pay him disability benefits.
But the city appealed and won. Gradually, those involved in the decades-long saga — lawyers and judges, police officers and city staff — have died. Traces of the dispute are now confined to Lewis’ memory and the stack of files he keeps tidy in a black binder.
He lives frugally, residing in the same home for 50 years. He has enough to keep the roof above his head but little else, he said. He borrows money from friends and family. He tries to keep up with his credit card payments.
The election of Mayor Castor in 2019, he said, stirred hope. Before entering politics, she rose through the ranks of the Tampa Police Department to become the first woman and first openly gay person to serve as chief.
Two years later, the city unveiled a monument to the
Fearless Four, which dominates the downtown police headquarters. “I would not be standing here today had it not been for the courageous action of each and every one of these individuals,” Castor said at the unveiling.
In 2022, Lewis met with her and then-police chief Mary O’Connor.
He said that they recognized he’d encountered racial prejudice when he went before the pension board decades ago. But they said their hands were tied and he says he didn’t hear more from them on the subject. “Rufus is an absolutely wonderful person who dedicated his life to serving our community,” Castor said in a statement last month. “I have no authority over the pension, but I would love to see this work out for him.”
Last May, Lewis stood before the nine-member pension board, asking to be reconsidered.
The board’s general counsel opined that they did not have authority to switch Lewis’ disability pension to line-of-duty.
Lewis returned home. Welcoming him there, just inside his front door, was a framed award.
It read: “City of Tampa Police Department Certificate of Appreciation.”