"Despite not having to show up for work since June 2007, Manuel Avila received periodic increases in pay, managed to double his monthly pension and qualified for free healthcare for the rest of his life at the expense of city taxpayers.
Avila qualified for all those benefits while spending the past nine years on paid leave from the Paterson, New Jersey, police department because he was under investigation for having sex with a female prisoner at the city's jail.
It gets worse, though, because that crime would never have happened if Avila's bosses hadn't already been trying to give his retirement benefits a little boost.
The Paterson Press and NorthJersey.com have the details on how Avila—apparently with plenty of help, or at least an abundance of people willing to look the other way—was able to boost his annual pension to about $70,000 from an estimated $32,000 if he had been forced to retire in 2007 when a police psychiatrist recommended removing Avila from the force.
"But instead of forcing Avila out of the police department, city law enforcement officials decided to allow him to stay on the job for another six months so he could reach a critical pension milestone of 20 years, the court records show," the Paterson Press wrote.
While there, he was charged with sexually assaulting a female prisoner.
Those charges were dropped in 2010 after the city paid an undisclosed amount of money to the accuser as part of a settlement, but Avila remained on paid leave from the department until finally retiring this year.
The paper reports that state records show Avila's salary was $105,364 on June 1 of this year.
In 2007, his salary had been $80,740, according to state records.
Even though Avila's pension payment hasn't been made public yet—the board responsible for that says the paperwork is still being processed—the paper estimated that Avila will get about $70,000 a year, up from about $32,000 a year if he had been forced to retire in 2007..."
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