Because sexually assaulting his two young daughters was not “work-related,” former California Highway Patrol lieutenant Johnnie Swaim gets to draw almost six figures in an annual, taxpayer-funded pension.
Thanks for your service?
Though the jury that convicted Swaim of four felony counts of child molestation in 2013 in fact found that what he’d been doing was just the opposite of law enforcement, it’s apparently to his advantage that violating his own girls, both of whom were under 10 at the time, was not in his job description.
This really is permitting crime by cops and is obscene in several ways. Yet because he broke the law in his own home and on vacation — on his own time, rather than while working a shift — an administrative law judge ruled that he couldn’t be deprived of his full pension. Which is how, without any discussion, the CalPERS Board of Administration voted on Wednesday to restore a $99,000-a-year pension for Swaim, who is 56.
In much of America, former felons can’t even vote, and that’s not right. But here we are, supporting one for the rest of his life, and that isn’t, either.
After he was convicted of two counts each of a lewd act upon a child and oral copulation of a person under 14, prosecutors argued that he remained a threat to the community. In sentencing him to 10 years in prison, the judge cited Swaim’s “repeated molestation of prepubescent girls” — at least five over the course of more than two decades, according to testimony.
“You don’t need an expert to tell you that he has a problem that is not going to go away,” Imperial County Superior Court Judge Christopher Plourd said at the time.
During the sentencing phase of his trial, Swaim’s then 22-year-old daughter said in a statement read in court that she forgave her father, hoped that he’d get help and that he would ask God’s forgiveness, too.
“I’m praying you still want a relationship with me because I still want one with you,” she said.
Her 17-year-old sister recanted her testimony during the trial, and sobbed that she still wanted her father to see her graduate from high school.
After all the damage this man has caused, that he should be rewarded now — and that the public should be effectively punished by having to subsidize him no differently than if he’d been a hero first responder — defies all common sense and common decency.
In 2016, while still behind bars, he filed for retirement and started receiving a substantial pension.
Last year, CalPERS reduced that benefit, citing a state law that prevents public employees who commit felonies in the course of their work from benefiting from their law-breaking. Only, Swaim said his criminality was not work-related, and an administrative law judge agreed with him.
CalPERS attorneys said that police officers should be “held to a heightened standard of conduct, even when off-duty.” Sure they should, but there’s nothing “heightened” about expecting cops to refrain from committing terrible crimes.
That’s the absolute minimum.
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