Federal authorities have started a preliminary investigation into allegations of abuse of Montgomery County’s disability retirement system by some former high-ranking police officers, and have subpoenaed at least one current employer of a retired assistant police chief.
Gaithersburg City Manager Angel Jones told The Examiner she received a subpoena Tuesday afternoon from the office of U.S. Attorney Rod Rosenstein seeking access to information about Gaithersburg Police Chief John King.
Jones, who has been on the job only a month, said she passed the subpoena to a city attorney and instructed staff to respond to the request.
“It seems they are doing a preliminary investigation to access information about his disability retirement from Montgomery County so they can take the next steps to bring this issue to closure,” Jones said.
King, a former Montgomery assistant police chief, retired last year and receives hefty disability payments from the county while working full time as the Gaithersburg police chief.
According to King, he has severe back problems as a result of injuries he sustained more than 20 years ago when as a rookie officer he subdued a suspect high on PCP. His work as the Gaithersburg police chief, he says, is more of a “desk job” that is vastly different from that of an assistant county police chief, where he had to be able to perform certain physical tasks.
“The people that are close by me know the pain I have,” King told The Examiner Wednesday morning, adding that he had not been contacted by federal authorities at that time. Jones said she met with King Wednesday afternoon to inform him that she had received a subpoena about his case.
A September report from Montgomery County Inspector General Tom Dagley found that more than 60 percent of police officers who retired in recent years are receiving extra payments for work-related disabilities, compared with 3 percent of similar workers in Fairfax County.
Edward Lattner, a lawyer in the Montgomery County attorney’s office, told The Examiner Wednesday he was not comfortable commenting about whether county officials had also received subpoenas. He directed The Examiner to contact Rosenstein’s office for information.
Rosenstein would not comment about the subpoenas either.
“We’re not permitted to comment on anything like that,” Rosenstein told The Examiner.
