On-the-Job Illness Case Is Rejected After 4 Years on Full-Time Salary
Camille Senn said that criticism about her desk-job wardrobe was a "verbal assault."
(By Linda Davidson -- The Washington Post)
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In April 2000, Officer Camille Senn filed a sick-leave claim, saying that her superiors were unfairly changing her shifts and making derogatory comments. Her complaints began after a sergeant in the 7th District in Southeast said that the civilian clothes Senn was wearing at a desk job were too provocative, according to police records. "Do you have any other type of clothing that you can wear to work?" the sergeant asked.
Senn described the criticism as a "verbal assault" and said her head, neck and chest began hurting. She later said her superiors were acting at the behest of another supervisor with whom she had broken off a romantic relationship. Senn went to the police clinic for treatment, and the department approved her stress claim as an on-the-job illness.
For the next four years, other than for a few shifts, Senn stayed home. But she collected her full pay, tax-free, and received raises, which brought her annual salary to $58,124, personnel records show. "Yeah, it was a long time to be off," Senn said in a recent interview.
According to a report to Police Chief Charles H. Ramsey in 2001, the internal affairs office concluded that she was telling the truth about the affair but that her "claim of stress and sexual harassment is fabricated." Still, the department continued to pay her and pay for her treatment.
Senn, who insists her account is accurate, told a clinic psychologist that she was willing to return to work if her former lover was punished.
"Yes, I brought up returning," Senn said. "Now, I'm not saying I pushed it real hard. I mean, they were giving me my whole pay, tax-free, and I was off."
Even as officials disagreed over whether her stress was related to her job, no one said she should remain a police officer. "Her mood and stability, her anger, her anxiety. She's not somebody we're going to give a gun back to and police powers," clinic psychologist Richard Filson testified at a hearing.
In late 2004, the retirement board declared that Senn's stress was not caused by her job but that she was permanently disabled for police work. As a result, Senn, 38, receives about $26,000 a year from the department, she said.
"For four years, they paid me my full pay, tax-free, then one day they just turn that around? My retirement should be tax-free, too," Senn said.
-- Mary Pat Flaherty
and Del Quentin Wilber
