The day last year when Randy Adams signed on to become the city of Bell's police chief, the 59-year-old was immediately declared disabled, meaning that whenever he decided to retire, he would receives half of his $400,000 annual salary for life.
Funny, then, that Adams was taking rigorous spinning classes at the time. And that he had just posted an impressive time in a
5K race. And that, on an April 2008 job application for Orange County sheriff,
he noted he enjoys skiing and running in the 120-mile Baker to Las Vegas
Relay.
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By the way, now-ex chief Adams cut the disability deal with now-ex Bell City Manager Robert Rizzo of Huntington Beach. Rizzo is currently up on corruption charges, Adams is not.
Paul Pringle reports on Adams' retirement–the third-richest in California's massive pension system–in today's Los Angeles Times.
Adams was Simi Valley's outgoing police chief in 2003 when he filed a worker' compensation claim after supposedly injuring his back while lifting boxes he'd packed to take to his new job as Glendale's top cop. Glendale officials claim Adams recovered from back surgery years ago and was not disabled.
When Adams applied for Orange County sheriff, he mentioned no physical problems, Rick Francis, Supervisor John
Moorlach's chief of staff who helped interview the candidates, reportedly told Pringle. If Adams had been offered the job, he would have had to prove he was physically fit, Francis added.
Mark Pachowicz, Adams' attorney, maintains in the piece his client has lingering knee and neck injuries, that “it's been years” since Adams went skiing or long-distance running and that jogging and spin classes are good for Adams' ailing back, adding, “You mean you can't jog and be disabled?”
OC Weekly Editor-in-Chief Matt Coker has been engaging, enraging and entertaining readers of newspapers, magazines and websites for decades. He spent the first 13 years of his career in journalism at daily newspapers before “graduating” to OC Weekly in 1995 as the alternative newsweekly’s first calendar editor.