Disability pay of former Oakland police probed

OAKLAND, Calif. (AP) — Bay Area officials in Oakland are reviewing seven years of police disability retirements after learning last month that one of their former officers was collecting a disability pension even while he was working for the FBI.

Former Oakland police officer Aaron McFarlane received more than $52,000 in disability benefits each year while he was working as an FBI special agent in Boston.

Oakland spokeswoman Karen Boyd tells The San Francisco Chronicle (http://bit.ly/U5Oghg) that the city plans to compare the list of police officers who took medical retirements with requests for background checks to identify who may have claimed disability but got jobs elsewhere.

The 41-year-old McFarlane was recently identified as the federal officer who last year shot and killed Ibragim Todashev, a friend of suspected Boston Marathon bomber Tamerlan Tsarnaev.

He retired from the Oakland Police Department on medical disability in 2004, four years after he joined the department as a patrol officer. Those on disability retirement are banned from doing similar work for any other agency in California.

McFarlane joined the FBI in 2008.

Copyright 2014 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.

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