The city of Riverside is trying to fire three of its police officers because they’re using license plates for disabled veterans on their personal vehicles despite having no apparent problems performing their jobs, the officers’ attorney has claimed.
The department’s logic for firing the officers, their attorney Matthew McNicholas said, was that they must have lied to the California Department of Motor Vehicles in order to obtain the specialized plates, which exempt drivers from paying registration fees and allow them to use disabled parking spots and park in metered spots for free.
That logic is broken, McNicholas said, because under federal law, to get a 100% disability rating — which each of the officers obtained — a veteran doesn’t have to be fully disabled. A veteran can get that disability status through a combination of partial disabilities, such as partial hearing loss, post-traumatic stress disorder or a back injury. To obtain plates for veterans rated as 100% disabled, a person must submit a certificate from a medical professional or a county, state or federal veterans’ agency confirming their disability.
“The department said it’s a bad look” for the officers to come to work in their personal cars carrying plates for veterans with a 100% disability rating, McNicholas said in an interview Tuesday.
The Riverside Police Department declined to comment on the case or the officers’ status with the agency, citing employee confidentiality. But McNicholas said that the department is acting out of concern about public perception and to punish the officers for refusing to remove the plates when asked to do so by their superiors.
Officers Timothy Popplewell, Richard Cranford and Raymond Olivares were put on administrative leave and informed of an internal investigation into their use of veteran plates on May 21. They sued the agency about two months later, claiming in a complaint filed July 17 in Riverside County Superior Court that it had discriminated against them and harassed them based on their veteran and disability status. On Feb. 24, the Riverside City Council met in closed session to discuss whether to settle the case and voted against doing so, said Saku Ethir, the Riverside Police Officers’ Assn. attorney representing the officers. The day after that vote, the officers received notices of termination, Ethir said.
The city moved to fire the officers because despite having special veteran plates stemming from their war injuries, they “showed up to work” and “were completely fit and satisfactory,” McNicholas said in a video posted to Instagram March 2. All three had been asked by their superiors to replace the plates on their cars but refused, McNicholas said. A fourth officer with veteran plates agreed to remove them and has not faced termination, he said.
Through a spokesperson, the Riverside Police Department declined to answer questions about the officers, “due to the confidential nature of the personnel action which has not completed its process.”
In an Oct. 16 response to the officers’ lawsuit, the department said it “acted in good faith with reasonable belief that its actions were lawful and further did not directly or indirectly perform any acts whatsoever which would constitute a breach of any duty owed to Plaintiffs.”
Popplewell, Cranford and Olivares will still have a chance to argue to the department that they shouldn’t be fired, Ethir said. They’ve already been provided with documents the department relied on in its decision to fire them, but a hearing to appeal their termination has not yet been scheduled, she said. Ethir said she believes the department has not provided all the records it is legally obligated to give the officers.
Popplewell served in the military from 2008 to 2011 and was deployed in Iraq, McNicholas said. Olivares was in the Marines from 2013 to 2019 and was deployed in the Middle East and Africa. Cranford served in the Army from 2010 to 2014 and was deployed to Iraq. All three joined the Riverside Police Department in 2019, according to the lawsuit.
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