Tulsa Police Officer Leaves a Quarter Million on the Table. Why?

Sometimes the story is more about what isn't printed than what is printed.  That appears to be the case on the story coming out of Tulsa last week on a retiring police officer, Sean "Sticks" Larkin.   The story goes on about  Larkin's history, a bit of whining about good cops being called bad cops, but the interesting thing is the part about retiring after 24.5 years from the Tulsa Police Department.

24.5 years.... what is the significance of that?  Read the two text messages below.

The grey text message is from a current Tulsa PD officer. The Louisiana Plan has been copied and used in many state and local governments across the nation, not that we agree it is a good plan, but the significance is that Tulsa has such a plan.    In the Louisiana Plan public employees retire at thirty years of service but five years before that, at 25 years of service, they file for retirement and the money goes into the investment fund instead of being paid to the employee while the employee continues to work and draw full pay.   The end result is that the employee walks away with as much as a quarter million dollars at the start of his actual retirement in addition to the half salary they receive until they die of old age or from a jealous husband.

So the question is, why would Sean Larkin retire at 24.5 years of age and be content to draw his half salary and not stick around, pardon the pun as Sticks is his nickname, to draw the quarter million bonus?

First lets read some more texts from that conversation from above, with the Tulsa PD cop in grey.

The corruption scandal came to a head in 2011, you can read part of the story at this link, more is on the Tulsa World online if you have access.  It turns out that Larkin was an un-indicted co conspirator in this stinking mess of crooked cops playing loose with search warrants and maybe even planting evidence.

This story from 2011 might provide a bit more detail.    

 And it seems that Larkin never learned that playing fast and loose with the rules, AKA breaking the law, was not conducive to staying employed to draw a full pension.  Now we got a defense lawyer sending a letter around that we believe has likely lead to Larkin resigning before he could draw his quarter million bonus retirement.  Or being told to resign...

If this is true, losing the quarter million bonus and five years of higher level pay is the only price Larkin will pay.   But the info does ring true and it fits the puzzle. Only Larkin and his supervisors will know the truth.

It is important that we back the blue but it is also important that they keep their house in order and come up with a process that peer pressure solves the crooked cop issue, the very notion that there is a process that deals with corruption will prevent 95% of the corruption before it gets going.  Meanwhile prosecutors are frustrated in having bad cops kept on the force and have to drop cases where bad men and bad women walk free.  That isn't in society's interest.