Peoria Standard

The 3rd District Appellate Court's March 15 ruling that a former Peoria police department recruit injured during training is not entitled to lifetime family health care doesn’t seem to have come as a surprise to attorney Eugene Keefe.

“The ruling is a battle over lifetime family health care coverage on top of the already adjudicated pension," Keefe, a partner with the law firm of Keefe, Campbell, Biery and Associates in Chicago, recently told the Peoria Standard. “To get the additional taxpayer-funded lifetime benefit, she has to establish she was injured during police actions ‘reasonably’ felt to be in response to an emergency. Her problem is that training is a simulated, but not real, emergency. She was asserting she had to 'treat' training as an emergency for the training to be valid”

Jennifer Beckman reportedly was taking part in a simulated riot situation in 2015 as part of her training when she slipped on ice and snow. At some point, she was granted a lifetime line-of-duty disability pension.

Eugene Keefe

For the record, Keefe said he doesn’t think taxpayers should automatically be on the hook to pay lifetime benefits anytime an officer is injured on the job.

“I disagree with the idea that when on-the-job injuries preclude someone from being a police officer but they can do other work, that taxpayers have to pay them for life,” he added. “I cannot tell from this ruling whether Claimant Beckman could do other police or government work and it is possible she is totally disabled from all work.”