Eaton County sheriff sergeant, suffering seizures, wins case with state pension board

DELTA TWP. – After two years of fighting to get benefits from Eaton County, it appears that former Eaton County Sheriff Sgt. Jim West could get the break he needs.

The Municipal Employees Retirement System board voted unanimously Thursday to award West a duty-related disability pension over the objection of Eaton County.

The county has 60 days to file an appeal in circuit court, said Jennifer Mausolf, a spokeswoman for the retirement system. 

But Eaton County Controller John Fuentes said he doesn’t expect the county to appeal, a decision to be made by the Eaton County Board of Commissioners.

“I will not recommend further pursuit and would expect the board to accept that recommendation. The county’s position was heard and ruled upon,” he said in an email Thursday.

That opens the door to a monthly pension for West, 49, as well as health care coverage.

"Honestly, I'm speechless," West said Friday morning. "This is a tremendous relief."

He developed epilepsy 20 years after he was beaten in the head with a metal flashlight during an arrest in 1997.

Doctors at Michigan State University and the University of Michigan said the beating and the seizures were linked. Eaton County argued that the disability was not connected to the 1997 beating.

West was 18 months shy of qualifying for retirement.

West’s story in the Lansing State Journal Thursday drew heavy criticism of Eaton County’s action on social media.

Fuentes said that story wrongly suggested that the county was opposed to giving him his disability pension, when it was only opposing the duty-related pension.

The pension amount would be the same but Eaton County's collective bargaining contract requires that health care be provided for those with a disability connected to a job-related injury.

"There are conflicting expert medical opinions regarding the relationship between the 1997 incident and Mr. West’s current condition twenty years later, which as Mr. West’s employer, Eaton County is prohibited by privacy laws from discussing further details regarding," Fuentes said in an email.

Under a disability pension, West gets about three-quarters of his salary. If he had received his full pension, after 25 years, it would be capped at 80% of his salary.

After he fell ill, he asked Sheriff Tom Reich for light duty to get the needed 25 years in for full retirement. He also requested a duty-related disability pension and worker’s compensation. The county opposed all of his requests.

West, a well-respected 23-year Eaton County officer, said he felt abandoned by the county where he's spent his career. 

At age 15, he worked with the department as an Explorer, a Boy Scouts of America program. He was hired as a deputy at age 24.

He has been falling into debt and has paid for his own health care.

Some doctors, including independent evaluations from physicians at the University of Michigan and Michigan State University, said West’s seizures were the result of a lesion on the brain where he had been struck.

Eaton County relied on other evaluations that said the link between the 1997 injury and his seizures couldn’t be proven. In a filing in a worker’s compensation case, an attorney for Eaton County called the 1997 beating a “relatively minor event.”

Yet that so-called “minor event” was filled with human drama. West, after getting hit in the head by the flashlight, shot and killed a man on probation that he and his partner, Jeff Warder, were trying to arrest. Warder was nicked by the bullet. The two deputies were cleared of any wrongdoing.

Former Lansing Mayor Virg Bernero, who met West at the gym, and Rick Jones, a former state senator and Eaton County sheriff, usually political opposites, both raised questions about West’s treatment.

And both suggested that it took the pressure from Thursday’s story to get Eaton County officials to do the right thing and drop the appeal.

“What they did to him sends a terrible message to the troops,” Bernero said.

When officers do right, "which is 99% of the time, they deserve our support," he said.

Judy Putnam is a columnist with the Lansing State Journal. Contact her at (517) 267-1304 or at jputnam@lsj.com. Follow her on Twitter @judyputnam.

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