Page 25 - September 2019 FOP Newsletter

Military leaves do affect pension payments
In the last couple of months, I’ve had the pleasure of assisting a couple of our brothers and sisters
on their journey toward becoming members
of the Reserve or National Guard.
To my surprise, each branch of service was represented ⁠— rmy, avy, ir orce and Marines, plus one officer who enlisted in the Coast Guard.
During my conversation with each of these officers, I carefully explained what to expect from
the Chicago Police Department (CPD). I also emailed them sever- al important documents U published by the U.. epart- ment of Justice, 330 ILCS 61 Service Member Employment and eemployment ights ct and the mployee esource 01-14 from pril 4.
U is the minimum reuirement for employers and service members, while 330 61 epands on U, provides addi- tional benefits to service members and eplains employer reuire- ments.
01-14 adds additional benefits beyond the federal and state reuirements and eplains the procedure to apply for military leaves of absence from the CPD.
I explained to the officers the sacrifice they will be undertaking and presented several examples, including the following:
• Time spent traveling to battle assemblies (drill) is not paid by their branch of service or the CPD, although officers must be given travel time by the CPD.
• Under U, the service member cannot be reuired to work eight hours prior to reporting for battle assemblies and eight hours upon returning home from battle assemblies.
• eep in mind that a service member may not be reuired to
wor, but there is also no reuirement for the to pay the service member. Thus, the officer may be reuired to use elec-
tive time for these travel hours.
hen retired from the rmy eserve, had fewer than
75 hours of compensatory time, and I’ve been a detective for more than 20 years.
Today’s Reserve and National Guard members are not only expected to attend battle assemblies (one weekend a month) and annual training (up to 29 days), but also ad- ditional duty days for military occupational specialty schools, leadership development courses, training and mobilization/de- ployments. Thus, it is critical for an officer to manage his or her
military leaves because it will affect his or her pension.
There are no laws or city ordinances reuiring the to mae payments on behalf of an officer while on military leave. The of- ficer’s seniority date remains the same but the pension time does not, so an officer may need to make a payment to the Policemen’s nnuity and enefit und of hicago to achieve his or her retire-
ment goal.
I told the officers about a situation that happened to me, when I
had 2.7 years of no payments to the pension and had to either pay into the fund or stay on the CPD.
Thans to all of those who have answered our nations call. s ritish rime inister inston hurchill once stated The reserv- ist is twice the citizen.”
You have sacrificed time from family, work and life for service to our country. I’m truly amazed by and grateful for the one percent of our fellow citizens who have served.
Thank you for all you do, and please be careful out there.
If you have questions or comments, please send me an email at LTC_Cruz@wowway.com.
JERRY CRUZ
CHICAGO LODGE 7 ■ SEPTEMBER 2019 25