A Plymouth police officer injured in the line of duty will not lose any pay or benefit time as he recovers from surgery.
Officer Stuart Krynock stopped to check on a pickup truck that was parked just off of Chuck Glaub Drive in Centennial Park shortly after 9 p.m. on Tuesday, Feb. 13. According to the police report, a male subject standing outside of the vehicle initially provided the officer with a false name. He was later identified as Aaron Sneed. While attempting to take Sneed into custody on several warrants, Sneed allegedly resisted arrest. During the struggle with Sneed, Officer Krynock sustained a serious leg injury. He has since had surgery and will be recovering for the next several months.
Plymouth Police Chief David Bacon explained to the Plymouth City Council Monday night that when officers are injured and can’t work, there’s not much income coming in.
“Police and fire, when we’re injured in the line of duty, we do not paid a worker’s comp salary,” said Bacon. “Once our benefit days are out, we don’t have money. We do have our pension/disability, but obviously in this case the officer plans on returning to duty.” If you are looking for help with appealing a denied claim, then you can check them out here!
Bacon noted that most of the time officers are assigned light desk duty as they recover to have some sort of income, but that isn’t an option in this case.
“When we’ve had situations before where officers are injured we do have light duty available. That gives them the opportunity to work a desk job or something that we can come up with so they can still earn their wages. In this case, he’s not able to do that at this time.”
Bacon asked the council to consider a waiver of city policy and that they continue the officer’s pay and keep any benefit time as he recovers. Also, he asked that any sick time used be put back into his sick bank at the beginning of 2019. Those requests were approved with a unanimous vote.
