Garcetti vows tighter oversight of injury claims

Los Angeles Mayor Eric Garcetti issued a warning to city police officers and firefighters who might be abusing a leave program that pays them 100% of their salaries, tax-free, while out with claimed injuries.

“Watch out,” Garcetti said during a downtown news conference. “We’re going to make sure that we’re coming after you.”

The mayor’s comments come a day after a Times investigation that found the city spent more than $328 million on salaries, medical bills and other expenses for police and firefighters on injury leaves from 2009 through 2013.

Total salaries paid to those employees increased more than 30% — to $42 million a year -- from 2009, The Times found.

The number who took leaves grew 8%, and they were out of work an average of nearly 9 weeks — a 23% increase compared with 2009.

The increased frequency and cost of those leaves has forced the Fire Department to spend millions of dollars a year in overtime and reduced the number of police officers on the street, city officials said.

Garcetti did not indicate whether or how the city might increase oversight of the Injured on Duty, or IOD, program. He did say some leaves drag out because the city, which is responsible for medical care for injured employees, is responding to requests for treatment “too slowly.”

About half of the medical costs covered claims for so-called cumulative trauma or occupational disease — umbrella terms for ailments that are not linked to a specific on-the-job injury. They include afflictions common to aging bodies regardless of profession: back strain, knee strain, high blood pressure, carpal tunnel syndrome.

Less than 1% of the medical costs covered injuries attributed to acts of violence, smoke inhalation or contact with fire or extreme heat, Personnel Department data show.

One former firefighter, who received more than $240,000 in salary while on repeated leaves since 2009, filed claims for recurring back and knee problems, including some suffered playing racquetball and basketball while on duty, The Times found. A police officer was recently granted injury leave after hurting himself bench-pressing 400 pounds in the police Olympics in Las Vegas, records show.

Among the handful of public safety officers charged with fraud in recent years was a professional cage-fighter who competed while out with a claimed shoulder injury and a police officer who taught scuba lessons for a Long Beach dive shop while out on leave.

Prosecutors and investigators say building winnable cases of suspected injury leave fraud is legally difficult.

Even when city officials are suspicious about an injury claim, fraud is difficult to prove because it’s not enough to show that an employee has engaged in strenuous physical activity while on leave. Investigators typically must also prove that the injury occurred off-duty or that the employee lied about his or her condition to obtain benefits, according to prosecutors.

On Tuesday, a judge said the actions of the police officer who taught scuba on leave seemed “fraudulent by nature” but dismissed most of the charges, citing lack of evidence that the officer had misrepresented his condition to the doctor who declared him disabled.