Officer “placed himself on duty” when he saw drunk driver
An off-duty transit police officer in British Columbia who was injured while attempting to stop an impaired driver will get worker’s compensation following a recent ruling by a Workers Compensation Appeals Tribunal.
“It’s huge,” says Steve Milne, WCB and OH&S Co-ordinator with the Canadian Office and Professional Employees’ Union (COPE). “Given the lack of many other decisions like this, this can only help all other emergency service workers in the province.”
In December 2008, the officer was on a day off and driving home with his family. He saw a vehicle weaving back and forth across the road. He called 911, identified himself as a transit police officer and continued to follow the man when he was told police could not respond immediately.
The driver eventually hit a parked car. The officer approached the driver, showed his badge and tried to pull the keys out of the ignition. The driver pushed the officer out of the vehicle and drove away.
As the officer’s family looked on, his boot got caught on the passenger door and he was dragged away. The wheel of the truck drove over the officer’s right arm and tore his jacket and pants.
Police later found 80 grams of marijuana in the vehicle and the driver was found to have a blood-alcohol level of 0.250.
The Workers’ Compensation Board, also known as WorkSafeBC, denied the police officer’s initial claim on the grounds that he was off duty at the time. The WCB Review Division affirmed the decision a few months later.
COPE argued police can place themselves “on duty” to intervene in a crime, even if they are not on shift.
“If he wasn’t a police officer, he wouldn’t have done it,” says Milne, adding the police service later paid the officer overtime and reimbursed him for the damaged clothing.
In a rare situation, the presentation to the Appeals Tribunal was made jointly by COPE and the employer, the South Coast British Columbia Transportation Authority Police Service (SCBCTA).
SCBCTA lawyer, Oscar Allueva, says while the ruling is significant, it’s not a license for off-duty officers to involve themselves in every infraction of the law.
“You want to be aware there’s a process to go through. You have to show your badge, report it to other police — there are several factors to placing yourself on duty,” he says. “It’s not to deal with a parking disagreement.”
Allueva says the police force has stopped short of creating a policy around what off-duty officers should do if they see an offence being committed.
“There are too many situations and factors that come into it to put a policy in place,” he says. “It has to be taken on a case-by-case basis.”
Allueva says the tribunal win is especially significant for transit police who work in tandem with other police forces in B.C.’s Lower Mainland. He says the initial review board “viewed transit police as a lesser police service” despite the fact they take the same training as regular police officers and swear the same oath.
“There was a lack of understanding,” he says. “We’ve since put evidence before the Appeals Tribunal that ties the legislative authority of transit police with the ability of an officer to put himself on-duty.”
In 1993, the WCB Review Board granted compensation to a police officer who was injured while intervening in a robbery. That decision was made on the basis that “once the police officer saw objective evidence of a crime in process, his role as a police officer was engaged.”
