A Tucson police officer is suing the department for more than $10,000 worth of back pay he says is being withheld, documents show.
In a lawsuit filed July 18 in Pima County Superior Court, Rico Martin Acevedo alleges the department and city violated Arizona law by denying him nearly four years’ worth of assignment pay while he worked on the department’s SWAT team.
Acevedo, a 15-year veteran of the department, is asking the court for $30,691 in damages, which is three times the amount of pay he’s owed. Because the city acknowledged the error, it’s now liable for three times the amount of back pay, according to the Arizona wage laws.
In 2004, Acevedo became a field training officer, which entitled him to a 5 percent increase in pay. Two years later, he joined SWAT, which also comes with a 5 percent pay raise. At the time, he wasn’t eligible for the raise, since he was already receiving the increase as a field training officer, court documents show.
In 2008, Acevedo stopped working as a field training officer but stayed on SWAT. The payroll department “for some unknown reason and error” removed the 5 percent assignment pay for his field training position, but failed to reapply the 5 percent SWAT pay, according to court documents.
Acevedo worked on the SWAT team until July 2015, three years after becoming a counselor at the police training academy. Because of the reassignment to the academy, a 5 percent raise for that position was added.
When he resigned from his assignment with SWAT, Acevedo contacted payroll to alert them to the departure and subsequent move to the academy.
During a conversation with a payroll employee in August 2015, Acevedo was told he hadn’t received his SWAT assignment pay from September 2008 through July 2012, according to court documents.
Acevedo had assumed payroll was paying him correctly for his SWAT assignment, the documents said.
The city’s human resources department investigated the situation and confirmed that he wasn’t paid the proper wages for 46 months, but it recommended compensating him only for 12 months, the documents said.
The lawsuit claims that under Arizona law, Acevedo is entitled to recover all of the unpaid wages and the city had “no proper, good-faith basis for not timely and fully paying (him) all the wages he earned.”
Acevedo offered to settle with the city for $30,691 — triple the lost wages — but neither TPD nor the city replied within the allotted 60 days, the documents said.
Lisa Judge, an attorney for the Tucson Police Department, would not comment on the lawsuit, deferring to the City Attorney’s Office.
City Attorney Mike Rankin said he was unable to comment because the case is pending in court.
