Police Officers, Deputies, and Correctional Officers

The law provides eligible peace officers a leave of absence at full salary in lieu of temporary disabilityTD / TTD / TPD Temporary Disability, Total or Partial. Wage replacement while recovering. Two-thirds of average weekly earnings; 2026 maximum $1,764.11/week. for up to one year. Not two-thirds. Not capped. And generally treated as excluded from income because it is paid in lieu of temporary disability — but § 4850 itself says nothing about tax, so confirm it with a tax professional.

The classifications covered are specific and include city police officers, county sheriff’s deputies, probation officers and listed probation department classifications, and others — state correctional officers are not on the § 4850 list. If your agency has told you § 4850 does not apply to you, check the statute against your actual classification — this is a common and expensive error.

Heart trouble, which can include hypertension when it affects the heart. Extends past separation from service on a sliding scale tied to years of service.

Cancer — § 3212.1, where exposure to a known carcinogen is demonstrated.

Pneumonia, tuberculosis, meningitis, bloodborne infectious disease, MRSA, biochemical exposure, and Lyme disease across §§ 3212 through 3213.2, with the applicable section depending on classification.

Low back — § 3213.2, for city police, sheriff’s deputies, CHP officers, and University of California peace officers with at least five years of full-time service who were required to wear a duty belt. Low back impairment is presumed industrial. It extends after separation, three months for each year of service, up to 60 months.

Post-traumatic stress — § 3212.15, for many peace officer classifications, for injuries on or after January 1, 2020. It is currently set to expire on January 1, 2029. Its dates have been extended before — verify the current text against your date of injuryDate of injury For a cumulative or occupational disease claim, the law sets it as when you first suffered disability and knew or should have known it was work-related — not when the wear began. Almost every deadline runs off this. rather than relying on any secondary description.

What a presumption means practically: the agency has to prove the condition is not industrial, and for most of these it cannot attribute the condition to a disease existing before employment. That is a fundamentally different case from the one every other injured worker has to prove.

The presumptions in detail.

Industrial disability retirement through CalPERS, a county 1937 Act system, or a city system runs parallel to the workers’ compensation case. For CalPERS members, the law sends a disputed question of industrial causation to the WCABWCAB Workers’ Compensation Appeals Board. The court system that decides these cases. 23 district offices statewide., and a determination in one can bind the other.

Two mistakes we see repeatedly:

Settling the comp case without understanding what it does to a pending IDR application. A Compromise and ReleaseC&R — Compromise and Release A lump sum that closes future medical treatment permanently. with the wrong language can undercut the disability finding the retirement depends on.

Letting an IDR determination be made without knowing what it does to the comp case. The findings are not independent.

Sequence and language matter more here than in any other kind of workers’ compensation case, and the cost of getting it wrong is a pension, not a settlement.

Vigil v. County of Kern (2024) 89 Cal.Comp.Cases 686 (Appeals Board en banc) is directly relevant when injuries to more than one body part are rated together: it allows impairments to be added instead of combined where the medical evidence shows how each affects daily activities.