Four years after applying for accidental-disability retirement, a former Sierra Vista police officer appears one step closer to finally collecting a check, thanks to a decision announced by the Arizona Court of Appeals.
In August 2018, Jock Russell applied for disability retirement after resigning from the Sierra Vista Police Department based on a medical diagnosis of post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD). His PTSD began, Russell says, after an incident six months earlier in which a drunk man killed himself with a gun Russell had confiscated but then returned.
Since then, the Sierra Vista Public Safety Personnel Retirement System Local Board has thrice denied Russell’s retirement application after discussions about whether Russell’s disability claim was connected to the suicide or perhaps pre-existed his hiring in 2013.
The Board also considered whether Russell, who was in a psychology PhD program, was simply hoping to obtain a sizeable pension check by pretending to have mental health problems.
A Cochise County judge upheld the Board’s rejection of Russell’s disability application, after which an appeal was filed with the Arizona Court of Appeals. The rejection could be affirmed, according to Presiding Judge Carl Eppich, “unless it is arbitrary, capricious, or an abuse of discretion.”
Which is what the three-judge appellate panel unanimously decided happened, Eppich wrote in a Aug. 26 decision.
“Because the Board’s findings were unsupported by substantial evidence in the record, and because the Board abused its discretion by disregarding uncontroverted evidence regarding medical causation, we reverse and remand to the superior court for further orders consistent with this decision,” Eppich wrote.
Russell stands to receive about $3,165 per month in disability pay which will have to be backdated to the effective date of his retirement. However, the Board has 30 days to petition the Arizona Supreme Court for review of the appellate decision.
Court records show Russell first went to work as a Sierra Vista police officer in February 2002 and then resigned in March 2010. During that time, he experienced “a traumatic life-threatening event” while on-duty with a DEA taskforce during an investigation of the Sinaloa Cartel.
Russell’s 2010 resignation, however, was for reasons unrelated to that incident. He also made the decision at the time to end his PSPRS membership.
A year later, Russell was hired by the city in a civilian position as a records supervisor, a job which did not require a peace officer certification and was not eligible for PSPRS membership. Then before being rehired as a police officer in 2013, Russell was required to undergo an evaluation with the PSPRS medical board.
Nothing was found to indicate any preexisting physical or mental conditions which might limit Russell’s future eligibility for an accidental-disability pension.
According to court records, around late 2016 or early 2017 Russell suddenly began to experience daydreams about the traumatic cartel incident. He then experienced another on-duty traumatic incident in February 2018 for which Russell sought professional treatment within the month.
The second incident involved the suicide of a man Russell arrested for DUI following a traffic stop. Russell seized a gun from the man and wrote out a citation, then used his officer’s discretion to drive the man home instead of booking him into jail.
The gun was returned to the man at the home where he used it shortly after to kill himself while Russell was still on-duty.
Russell filed a workers’ compensation claim related to his difficulties dealing with the suicide incident, after which a doctor diagnosed Russell with PTSD. He was referred to counseling but over the next few weeks reported that he was continuing to struggle to perform his duties despite the fact his supervisors did not report any concerns.
The city approved Russell for paid leave under the Family Medical Leave Act effective April 2018 and his doctor eventually recommended Russell take a medical retirement. That is when the dispute started.
In his resignation letter, Russell notified the city he was leaving his job effective Aug. 3, 2018. He also noted that while he would no longer be a police officer he would “continue to work in psychology” to help other officers deal with the rigors of the job.
Russell and the city’s five-member PSPRS Board would argue several times about whether Russell was faking PTSD symptoms. If he had PTSD, the questions turned to whether the disability was rooted in the suicide incident during his second term of employment or the cartel incident in Russell’s first term of employment.
Board members spent a lot of time discussing the fact Russell never mentioned PTSD in his resignation letter and that he did not resign until August 2018, months after the DUI suicide. One of Russell’s supervisors even testified he believed Russell “was setting up a disability retirement” and “knew what to say for a PTSD diagnosis” given Russell’s participation in a PhD program in Performance Psychology.
Some members also considered Russell’s admitted ongoing marital troubles at the time, as well as his decision to begin a side business while employed fulltime as a police officer and his frequent bouts of insomnia and depression.
But none of those extraneous issues mattered, according to the Arizona Court of Appeals. What did matter, Eppich wrote, is that the Board “ignored uncontroverted medical evidence showing that Russell had been unable to work at the time of his resignation” due specifically to PTSD during his second term as a police officer.
“Here, there was no medical evidence suggesting that Russell could have been diagnosed with PTSD before he was rehired in 2013,” he wrote. “Thus, the expert medical evidence before the Board indicated that Russell’s symptoms and subsequent diagnosis both came after his rehiring, and there was no material conflict for the Board to resolve.”
Based on the facts presented, “the Board abused its discretion by substituting its own understanding of PTSD for that of medical experts, disregarding expert testimony,” according to the decision.
The decision also noted that a PSPRS member is not required to indicate a reason for resignation and it is legal for someone receiving an accidental-disability pension to pursue other gainful employment.
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