Illinois Police Commander Sues Local Village over Overtime Pay

Port Barrington, ILLawrence Benner, the former police commander of a sleepy Illinois town, has sued his former employer to reclaim lost wages from unused vacation time and overtime pay.

span itemprop="image" itemscope itemtype="https://schema.org/ImageObject" style="display:block">In the lawsuit, filed this week in the US District Court in Chicago, Benner claims that Barrington refused to pay him overtime for extra work he performed between May 2007 and July 2009, adding that the village also denied him pay for roughly 235 sick and vacation days that the commander had accrued prior to the dissolution of the Port Barrington Police Department late last year.

Benner claims to have worked between 86 and 104 hours of overtime over a typical 12- to 16-day work period. Refusing to pay for this time is a violation of the Fair Labor Standards Act.

"The village breached its contract of employment with Benner by taking away his earned but unused vacation and sick days without compensation in 2007, [and] failing to pay him for his earned but unused vacation and sick days through 2009," says the official complaint.