LABOR FOR A NEIGHBOR: Angelo Amendolare helps set up fencing at home of neighbor in Freeport.

The phrase "disabled cop" conjures up images of a valiant public servant maimed by gunfire or crippled in a high-speed car chase, left struggling to support a young family.

Even in suburbia, police work can be dangerous and unpredictable, and a few violent encounters on Long Island are the sort that figure in the nightmares of officers and their loved ones. A frightening photo of one such victim hangs in the lobby of the Suffolk Police Department - Officer Kenyon Tuthill, disfigured and partly blinded in 1986 when an irate motorist blew away much of his face with a shotgun.

But often, the disabling police accident on Long Island is far more mundane, sometimes resembling a comic pratfall rather than cops-and-robbers heroics.

And while the unique dangers of law enforcement were the rationale behind New York state's generous police disability pension system, in practice the system also awards the lucrative pensions to officers who claim injuries from activities that ordinary citizens risk every day - such as going to the bathroom, walking through a doorway, working in an office or driving around on routine errands.

Many of the accidents are unwitnessed, forcing police departments to rely on an honor system for reporting injuries. And the vast majority of the injuries - more than 90 percent - are orthopedic, according to the state retirement system. Such injuries and the degree of pain can be difficult to quantify with hard medical evidence.

This combination of an honor system and lack of hard medical verification, senior Long Island police officials say, invites potential fraud.

"The individuals say they hurt," said Dr. Vert Mooney, a professor in orthopedics at the University of California at San Diego. "There is absolutely no test that will guarantee whether an individual injured himself."

"A lot of cops say, `Hey, the system's here, it's got a certain amount of leeway, we can apply, and I'm going to take advantage of it,'" said Suffolk Lt. William Costello, a public information officer for the police department.

The tax-free disability pensions, which pay up to three-quarters of an officer's final salary, often leave police retirees collecting more take-home money than when they were working. Many collect Social Security disability checks in addition to their pensions. Regular police retirements provide only half of an officer's final pay, and federal taxes are taken out.

While the state comptroller's office keeps no statistics on how police officers are injured, police officials say the majority of accidents do not occur in pursuit of suspects, estimating that 50 to 75 percent of the injuries are non-combative and noting that many of them occur in the relative safety of police buildings.

Police union officials, on the other hand, complain that the departments haven't done enough to provide safe working environments.

"Have you ever been through any of these station houses? I tell you, they're a wreck," said Nassau Police Benevolent Association President Gary DelaRaba.

Newsday reviewed the circumstances of dozens of disability cases and found many that resulted from slips, trips and falls nowhere near a crime scene.

Among the disability cases Newsday examined were these:

Nassau police Officer Clement Maresco. He said he fell in the men's room at his station house. The police contended that his neck injury wasn't job-related, but the courts and the state disagreed. Pension: $48,067 a year, tax-free.

Nassau police Officer Robert Rich. He said he slipped on applesauce, then fell again while patrolling the roof of police headquarters. But his medical file raises questions about the cause of his neck injury. And two doctors concluded that his physical exam did not support his complaints. Later, police discovered that he ran a lawn-cutting business while complaining of a disabling injury. Pension: $60,471 a year, tax-free.

Suffolk Insp. Philip McGuire. He said he fell face-forward into a wall after catching his shoe on a worn doormat at the Sixth Precinct in Coram, aggravating an old back injury. Diagnostic tests revealed only a mild bulging disc, according to medical records reviewed by Newsday. Pension: $58,670 a year, tax-free.

Nassau police Officer Angelo Amendolare. He said he slipped and fell on ice at a relief point while trying to unlock his personal car with a coat hanger after locking his keys inside. A police doctor concluded there was nothing wrong with his spine after viewing police surveillance videotapes of him carrying heavy luggage at Kennedy Airport, headed for and returning from a cruise. Pension: $44,325 a year, tax-free.

Nassau Det. John Marjoribanks. He said he fell while brushing snow off his car at the Seventh Precinct in Seaford, aggravating a 1972 injury to his back. But records show he hurt the same part of his back in a drunk-driving crash two years before the slip-and-fall. Pension: $46,327 a year, tax-free.

To some Long Island police officials, cases like these reflect a pension system they describe as all too willing to reward clumsiness and reluctant to look behind the official report of an accident. Pension officials say they're just administering the program according to state law, which contains nothing to rule out disability pensions for slips and falls.

But disability pensions that result from slip-and-fall accidents leave many police officials and rank-and-file officers shaking their heads. Why, they ask, should an officer injured in a slip-and-fall in the safety of police headquarters get the same award as one injured in a shooting?

"If a member steps on his shoelace and falls down, he should not be entitled to the same money as someone who gets shot and is disabled for the rest of his life," said Nassau Det. Sgt. Robert Kiesel, who runs the department's medical administration unit.

A former Suffolk counterpart agreed: "I have problems with guys falling out of chairs, slipping on unknown substances," said Sgt. Vincent Ward. " ....I say to myself, they're getting the same as the guy running after a prisoner and wrestling him to the ground." Ward formerly ran the Suffolk medical evaluation unit, which monitors police out on sick leave.

Yesterday, Newsday reported that over the past decade Long Island police have been winning disability pensions at a substantially higher rate than those elsewhere in the state and in major cities with higher crime rates, such as Boston, Los Angeles and Washington, D.C. In some recent years one out of three Nassau and Suffolk police officers have retired on disability, compared with less than 18 percent in the rest of the state system.

The law providing police with disability pensions does not clearly define an "accident." The comptroller's office has relied on the courts for guidance on whether an "accident" occurred.

In the early days of the police pension system, the state took a hard line on what constituted an accident eligible for a disability pension. But over the years, partly as a result of court decisions and legislation broadening the system, the state has awarded disability pensions for the most commonplace slips and falls.

The standards have become more and more liberal, prodded by aggressive lawyers challenging denials of disability retirement claims. In recent years, the courts have upheld the idea that if a police officer slips, even in headquarters, it constitutes an accident. As defined by the Court of Appeals in 1982, an accident is a "sudden, fortuitous mischance, unexpected, out of the ordinary and injurious."

In another case involving a New York City officer, the state Court of Appeals said in 1984 that it was an "accident" within the meaning of the disability law when the officer lost his balance after he stood up from a chair.

After those court decisions, the state pension system was forced to loosen its definition of an accident. Finally, in 1984, faced with growing confusion over the definition of an accident and an effort by the state to reform the system, the Legislature agreed to a new disability category that allows police to collect a pension for any job-related injury, whether the result of an accident or not.

For police hired after Jan. 1, 1985, this replaces accidental disability. Police hired before 1985 have the option of applying for accident disability or the new category.

This category, called "performance of duty disability," pays a reduced benefit of 50 percent of final salary. But in this category, police may collect workers' compensation at the same time as the disability pension. In many cases, the workers' compensation payments, which are not taxable, could drive the officer's total collection to more than 75 percent of his final salary, with no taxes due.

Arguing against the new pension category, the Permanent Commission on Public Employee Pension and Retirement Systems wrote in a June, 1984, memo that under its provisions, an officer "could receive total benefits far in excess of his actual salary."

In all types of police disability, police are eligible to apply for Social Security disability as well, with no reduction in their state pensions.

With the system's evolution, today it is not unusual for disability pensioners to have received their injuries in slip-and-falls. "The majority are noncombative. More than fifty percent are not due to criminal activity," Kiesel said.

Ward, interviewed last fall, said that of 44 Suffolk police officers then out of work on job-related injuries, only 27 percent had been injured in confrontations. "That means that seventy-three percent of the guys either fell out of a chair, or were involved in a motor vehicle accident, or they slipped on some slippery substance, ice, snow or some liquid on the floor," said Ward.

"They're not good at replacing equipment around here," Nassau's DelaRaba said, complaining of station house conditions. "I remember in my precinct the chairs were so bad they got rid of them. The guys had to stand for three days because they just didn't have any chairs."

Nassau Police Commissioner Donald Kane denied that there was any systemic maintenance problem in the department.

In many cases reviewed by Newsday, the circumstances of slip-and-fall accidents were questioned by the police departments, as was the extent of the injuries the officers said they suffered. Despite that, the details of the accidents get little scrutiny by the pension system. "We are not an investigative agency, we're a retirement system," Deputy State Comptroller John Mauhs, who runs the state pension systems, told Newsday.

State law, however, gives the comptroller's office broad authority to investigate retirement applications, including subpoena power and the ability to administer oaths and take testimony.

But pension officials rely on police department internal documents, in which a police officer's superior countersigns an accident report, but in practice rarely investigates the circumstances of an accident. Often the accidents are unwitnessed.

"Too often nobody's there, the guy says this is what happened, I fell," said Suffolk Police Commissioner Peter Cosgrove. "He may have a herniated disc. How he got it is maybe another question."

"It's amazing how many falls we'll get with no witnesses," Nassau's Kiesel added. "We can't disprove it, so we have to take it at face value. It's a home run unless I can prove fraud."

CLEMENT MARESCO:

THE WET FLOOR IN THE RESTROOM

Clement Maresco, a former Nassau police officer, was first injured in 1982 when he was lifting a heavy trundle. Doctors diagnosed a disc herniation. Such an injury, even though suffered in the line of duty, is not eligible for the highest level of state disability retirement because it is not caused by "an accident."

Maresco, now 50, was placed on light duty, performing clerical work in the Fourth Precinct in Hewlett. On Feb. 4, 1987, Maresco said he slipped on a wet floor and fell in the station house men's room, aggravating the injury.

Because a slip and fall is an accident, this type of injury is eligible for the most lucrative disability pension, under current interpretations.

But the police department argued that Maresco's injury wasn't job-related, because he was in the men's room and not technically working at the time. And police surgeons concluded that although Maresco had a disc herniation, he was fit for light duty.

Maresco argued, however, that his trip to the restroom was job-related. He said he was there not to attend to personal needs, but to wash his hands after soiling them on a computer teletype machine.

And he said he was in chronic pain.

A three-year legal battle ensued, turning on Maresco's reason for going to the restroom. Maresco, represented by PBA lawyers, argued it was job-related; the police department argued that it was not.

It ended in June, 1990, when the Appellate Division ruled that Maresco was entitled to line-of-duty-injury status. The ruling helped clarify for the state retirement system whether Maresco was eligible for a disability pension.

Four months after the court ruling, Maresco was awarded his disability pension. He gets $48,067 a year, tax-free. Maresco could not be reached for comment.

ROBERT RICH:

APPLESAUCE SPILL ON THE ROADWAY

Nassau police Officer Robert Rich was granted a disability retirement in 1991, 15 years after he filed his injury claim for slipping on applesauce. But his medical file raises questions about whether the accident ever occurred. In an early interview with his doctor, Rich said he strained his back while moving boxes, according to documents obtained by Newsday. And later, after Rich got his pension, the department learned he'd been running a lawn-cutting business while on sick leave, Kiesel said.

Rich was 30 in April, 1976, when he was sent to a fatal tractor-trailer accident on the Long Island Expressway in Plainview. The trailer's cargo: applesauce. Crates of it had fallen out, some splattering on the roadside and leaving a slippery mess. Rich says he was descending an embankment to the tractor-trailer when he slipped and fell on some of the applesauce, injuring his back.

The doctor who initially examined Rich in 1976, however, gave a different account of the incident: This "Nassau County policeman who was at work two days ago unloading a tractor trailer, apparently overturned, of its cargo for several consecutive hours and a few hours after completing this work, he noted a severe lower back, neck and leg pains and stiffness... He recalls no single injury, but states that the work was unusually difficult and cumbersome," wrote the doctor, Huntington orthopedist Andrew W. Lawrence.

The difference between Rich's account of the injury and Lawrence's account is significant. Under pension system rules, Rich's injury had to result from an "accident" to qualify for accidental disability retirement, not from physical exertion in the performance of his duty.

Lawrence, in his initial report, predicted that Rich would be back to work in a few days. But Rich remained on sick leave for much of the year, complaining of constant neck, arm and shoulder pain, and difficulty turning his head.

Rich sought medical help from a series of doctors. In 1981, five years after his injury, Rich went to Boston. There, an orthopedist said a diagnostic test revealed a previous fracture in his neck.

"The neck went undetected by doctors down here," Rich said. "I'd gone to thirteen doctors and it went completely undetected.

"He [the doctor] asked me, 'Has anyone told you you had a broken vertebra in your neck?' He showed me films. It was clear as a bell... You go to X number of doctors and they tell you, it's in your head."

But records show the break was not as clear-cut.

One Boston radiologist said the X-ray showed that the "previously questioned fracture . . . [was] not visualized."

Another radiologist, viewing the same X-ray, said it showed a "previous fracture."

And Rich's own local orthopedist, Dr. Stephen Zolan, subsequently said he had a healed fracture and an unstable spine and that further injury to it could have serious consequences.

But other doctors disagreed. An orthopedist hired by the county, Dr. Carl Weiss of Garden City, concluded that Rich's disability, if any, was based entirely on his subjective complaints, which Weiss called "vague." Weiss said Rich "would appear to be a hyper-reactor to his neck problem at best. He has been vastly overtreated. I believe he has no organic problem of any kind."

Rich also filed a claim for a second injury. While assigned to a security detail in 1983, he was on the roof of police headquarters. He said he became dizzy and fell, injuring his knee and toe. The fall, Rich said, was caused by pain-relieving drugs he was taking for neck pain.

An arthroscopic examination of Rich's knee, however, found the inside of the joint to be normal, a police surgeon noted.

Rich, who had missed 65 days of work in 1977, 99 days in 1978, 40 days in 1980, 124 days in 1981, 141 in 1982 and 45 in 1983, was finally designated a sick-leave abuser by the police department. He was placed under surveillance.

Kiesel, of the medical evaluation unit, observed Rich driving his car, playing with his dog and walking with no indication of pain other than an occasionally recurring limp, according to testimony Kiesel gave in a lawsuit that Rich filed against the county, which was attempting to force him to work.

Rich lost the lawsuit in 1985, and was forced to accept a light-duty assignment. By the late 1980s, Rich's job attendance had improved to the point that in 1990, he worked $16,454 worth of overtime.

Rich was initially turned down for disability retirement, but pursued his disability case relentlessly. Finally, the state retirement system gave him his pension, based partly on the testimony of a psychiatrist, according to sources familiar with the case. The pension system concluded that there was significant testimony that Rich believed he was disabled and felt pain, the sources said. Therefore, he was disabled as a result of the accident, the retirement system concluded.

The overtime boosted his disability payments, and he now receives $60,471 a year, tax-free.

Kiesel says he learned later - too late to affect the case, because police disability pensions aren't revocable - that Rich, while complaining of his injuries, was operating a sideline business: mowing lawns. The Internal Revenue Service in 1993 filed a tax lien against Rich for $6,030 for 1992. Kiesel said the lien was for non-payment of taxes on earnings from the lawn-cutting business.

Rich, now 48, said in an interview that he never cut other people's lawns. He acknowledged that ads for lawn-cutting, giving his phone number in Bayville, had appeared in a local shopper, but he said someone else must have placed the ads without telling him.

PHILIP MCGUIRE:

THE WORN DOORMAT

Philip McGuire's injury occurred shortly after he was demoted from assistant chief to deputy inspector. The reasons for the demotion are unclear. Former Suffolk Police Commissioner Daniel Guido would say only that "a situation arose where it was in the best interest of the people of Suffolk County for me to move him down and move somebody else up who could do the job better than he."

McGuire said he hurt himself when he fell on a worn doormat in the Sixth Precinct in 1988. The accident report states, "Injured employee caught right shoe in raised wires that were in a worn doormat near rear entrance to the building. Employee lost his balance and tripped into wall."

McGuire said the fall aggravated a 1973 injury when he was assaulted in North Amityville while trying to arrest a murder suspect.

"That day I got hurt. That changed my life forever," said McGuire, now 60 and living in Florida. As a result of the assault, he said, "I have muscle spasms on the right side of my back. It goes in and out. Then my right arm is numb and I have what I can best describe as lightheadedness."

But records examined by Newsday show that between the 1973 injury and the 1988 trip and fall, McGuire lost no time from work because of the injury. McGuire now says that he took off work because of his pain, but never put in for sick leave. Instead, he says, he took personal leave and vacation when he wasn't feeling well.

McGuire's physician, Dr. Jacob Lehman of Patchogue, classified him as partially disabled. Dr. Raphael Davis, an orthopedist with the State University at Stony Brook, described McGuire's injuries as "quite mild."

An orthopedist who examined McGuire for the county, Dr. Harvey Fishman, said he doubted the severity of McGuire's original injury because he lost no working time from it between 1973 and 1988.

"He is able to squat and bend fairly comfortably without any evidence of restrictive motion . . . Orthopedically, I feel this claimant has a very mild partial disability with very little objective findings to his subjective complaints... I do not see the need for any further treatment."

Assistant Deputy State Comptroller John McManaman of the retirement system said that the orthopedist who examined McGuire for the state felt he was disabled. "It's conceivable that even a fairly mild disability could get approved," McManaman said. McGuire, who retired in 1989, receives $58,670 a year, tax-free.

JOHN MARJORIBANKS:

The calm of the residential street in Baldwin was broken the afternoon of Jan. 22, 1986, when a Nassau police tow truck veered onto a lawn and hit a tree.

Stunned residents called police to report that a bleeding and incoherent officer needed assistance.

Nassau Det. John Marjoribanks, the vehicle's driver, had suffered a gash on his head. After police arrived on the scene and while they were waiting for an ambulance, Marjoribanks told Officer Lawrence Nullet that he had been pursuing an organized crime figure, according to an internal affairs unit report obtained by Newsday.

Sgt. Thomas Zanetti said that when he arrived on the scene, Marjoribanks exhibited a number of signs of being drunk, including a "heavy odor of alcoholic beverage on his breath," according to the internal affairs report.

Marjoribanks refused to take a breath test to determine whether he was under the influence of alcohol, the report said.

Police charged him with driving while intoxicated, and he was admitted to Nassau County Medical Center in East Meadow.

During a three-day hospital stay, Marjoribanks was treated for facial cuts and a concussion, and examined for a back injury. After his discharge from the hospital, Marjoribanks went to a police doctor, who noted, "He can only forward flex to 40 degrees before pain is felt in the L-1 area," referring to a lumbar vertebra. Coincidentally, it was the same vertebra that Marjoribanks had fractured years before, in 1972, when he was in a serious on-duty motor vehicle accident.

After the tow-truck accident, Marjoribanks was temporarily suspended and later pleaded guilty to the reduced charge of speeding.

But the question of who would pay for Marjoribanks' medical treatment became an issue within the county. The police department filed a workers' compensation claim for Marjoribanks, calling the tow-truck accident an on-duty injury. But the police department did not disclose the charges against Marjoribanks.

An alert official in the county attorney's office learned of the drunk-driving charge, and refused to pay the claim. Marjoribanks withdrew it.

Six months after the tow-truck accident, Marjoribanks visited the police surgeon, complaining of back pain that had flared up. But Marjoribanks related it not to the 1986 tow-truck accident, but to his 1972 car accident. Marjoribanks told a police doctor in 1986 that he frequently had pain connected to the 1972 accident, but never complained about it to the police doctors.

Two years later, Marjoribanks filed another accident claim - this one in connection with an unwitnessed slip-and-fall at the Seventh Precinct in Seaford.

Marjoribanks said he fell while cleaning snow off a police car. "I had cleaned the snow from the windshield and driver side glass. I slipped on the snow in the parking lot, and fell to the ground, injuring my back," his accident report said.

An X-ray at the Nassau County Medical Center found an "old compression fracture of L-1" - the same vertebra he'd fractured in 1972 and the same location where doctors had found his back pain centered after the 1986 tow-truck crash.

Then, Marjoribanks applied for, and was awarded, a disability pension - not from the 1988 fall or the 1986 tow-truck accident, but from the car crash that had occurred 17 years earlier.

McManaman said the state pension system, given evidence about all of Marjoribanks' accidents, ruled that he had been disabled by the 1972 car crash. "They ruled that in fact it was the '72 accident that was causal," said McManaman.

In March, 1989, the state granted Marjoribanks, now 54, a $46,327-a-year, tax-free disability pension. Contacted recently at his East Islip home, Marjoribanks denied any connection between his 1986 tow-truck accident and his disability.

After the 1972 accident, he said, "I was in a body cast for three and a half months. I had numerous problems." After the 1988 accident in which he fell on the snow, Marjoribanks said, a doctor told him, "Keep doing this and you're going to be in a chair forever."

ANGELO AMENDOLARE:

Angelo Amendolare was awarded a disability pension by the state in 1990 based on a 14-year-old back injury in a case fraught with questions.

State officials approved the $44,325 annual pension even though a police surgeon, after viewing a videotape of Amendolare lifting heavy luggage, wrote the state pension system that Amendolare demonstrated a "normal functioning lumbar spine."

Like many police injuries, Amendolare's was the result of a mundane accident, the kind that could happen to any worker.

On a shift change in 1976, he accidentally locked his keys in his personal car. After getting a coat hanger from a nearby police car, he walked toward his vehicle to unlock it. He lost his footing and fell on the ice.

Amendolare was diagnosed with a back sprain.

In the years that followed, Amendolare periodically complained of back pain and took sick leave for it. A police doctor noted in his file: "The consensus is that his injury is not severe [enough] to request disability."

Then, in 1990, Amendolare reported an episode of severe pain and began missing more days of work. Records show that a magnetic resonance imaging test revealed multiple small herniated discs, a condition whose symptoms, orthopedists say, can range from significant pain to none. He refused to work, even at a desk job, and applied for a disability retirement. He could bend over only 45 or 50 degrees, he told police doctors.

Then a tip came in to the police department. Amendolare was planning to take a Caribbean cruise. Police from Kiesel's unit went to Kennedy Airport to watch him as he departed.

On March 25, 1990, Amendolare was videotaped lifting four pieces of luggage out of the trunk of a car.

"He bends over freely and normally in regard to his entire spine in removing the four pieces of luggage from the car trunk... Inside the terminal at the check-in counter he is seen to bend his lumbar spine freely to 80 degrees. He is also seen again flexing freely and normally his lumbar spine to 90 degrees," according to an account of the videotape written by Acting Police Surgeon Joseph Serletti.

Investigators barely attempted to conceal themselves from Amendolare at the airport. The videocamera served as a camouflage, blending the police perfectly into the bustle of travelers eager to check their luggage and board their aircraft.

On Amendolare's return trip, police also watched and filmed him at JFK on April 1, and the videotape was even more revealing.

"Police Officer Amendolare bends 90 degrees from the lumbar spine over the luggage rack to check for his own incoming luggage. He first freely picks up, bent at 90 degrees, one large [piece of] luggage followed by his retrieving a second large luggage bag," Serletti wrote in a letter to the state retirement system. "...[H]e carries one in each hand walking out of the air terminal to a parked car... entire spine function appears normal."

Two days later, however, Amendolare came to the police surgeon's office and said he could bend only 45 degrees, records show.

The videotape and Serletti's narrative were sent to the state retirement system.

"The state, in its infinite wisdom, gave him three-quarters [disability retirement] seven weeks after the film was sent up to Albany," said Kiesel, who is critical of the state pension system.

Interviewed recently, Amendolare, now 44, said he was totally disabled and receiving Social Security disability payments of about $12,000 a year in addition to his tax-free disability pension of $44,325.

"This is not going to heal. This is not going to get better. You caught me in a prone position. I'm laying down," he said, adding, "There's not a hell of a lot I can really do."

Several weeks later, however, Newsday watched and photographed Amendolare as he worked on fencing at his neighbor's Freeport home.