Feb 20, 2012 - 10:20 am
Cop fired 40 days before retirement
Roger Anderson was 40 days from retirement — and the pension he would have earned after a 29-year career at the Bellevue Police Department.
Then one day his boss found out that Anderson had spent an hour of sick time taking a friend — former Bellevue Police Officer Chris Parent — through a state firearms certification test.Police Chief John Stacey called Anderson on the carpet about administering the test for Parent — an officer Stacey had gone to great lengths, and great expense, to keep off the force.
Anderson told his supervisors he made a mistake; that he had spent four hours of sick leave with one of his children, then an hour at a gun range administering Parent’s firearms test.
Anderson offered to forfeit that hour of sick time.
Stacey’s response: You’re fired.
The City of Bellevue listed Anderson’s cause of termination as failing to follow chain of command, failing to contact a supervisor before leaving his house, violating rules over sick leave, and failing to uphold the department’s integrity policy.
Anderson’s attorney, Steve Delaney, attributed the termination to something else: spite …
