April 11--An Atlantic City fire captain cleared in two criminal trials will receive more than a quarter-million dollars in back pay, following City Council approval Wednesday night.
Roderick Knox, 47, had been suspended without pay since his arrest in February 2011 on charges he sexually assaulted two teenage girls 15 years apart.
Jurors in two separate trials found Knox not guilty of the allegations.
He has since been reinstated as a captain in the department, although he has not yet returned to work as he took some vacation time.
Knox will received $252,841, a slight increase from the amount on the original agenda made public earlier this week. His attorney in an unrelated civil lawsuit against the city told The Press of Atlantic City on Monday that the original payout of $248,538 seemed light.
He would have made $115,901 in 2011, and $120,538 last year.
A lawsuit Knox filed before his arrest charges that the department racially discriminated against him as a black firefighter and that subsequent administrative action taken against him was retaliation.
The city also will pay police Sgt. Gregory Voci $217,042.59 in back pay after he was reinstated by an administrative law judge. Voci was suspended for administrative reasons, which were not publicly released. The city will also reimburse him for $9,287.56 in medical expenses. He was not listed on last year's payroll; but the 2010 payroll shows he was making $113,644 annually.
Councilman George Tibbitt, who is in charge of the Public Safety Committee, stressed that the payouts were not due to anything the city did wrong.
"We just have to abide by the court system," he said.
The money had been part of the budgets and therefore was taken from reserves, Director of Revenue and Finance Michael Stinson told council.
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Copyright 2013 - The Press of Atlantic City, Pleasantville, N.J.
