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Thursday, January 03, 2019

City corrections officer reinstated after bagels cost him job

His bagel defense survived a schmear campaign.

A city correction officer won back his job after a yearlong struggle that all started when he chowed down on some poppy-seed bagels — and lit up a routine drug test with traces of morphine and codeine.

The amounts were enough to get him fired, until an obscure city commission took the extraordinary step of overruling the Correction Department’s commissioner.

Officer Eleazar Paz was reinstated to his $82,000 post on Christmas Eve, bringing to full circle a back-and-forth legal battle that spanned nearly all of 2018.

“I wanted to cry when I heard they would take me back,” the 49-year-old Rikers officer said Wednesday.

“It was unbelievable what happened to me, because I didn’t do anything wrong.”

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4 comments:

Anonymous said...

WOW. How many poppy seed excuses have I heard in 25 years?? No problem. They ALWAYS get caught eventually.

Anonymous said...

Love those everything bagels, but pray you dont get hit with a pee test at work!

Anonymous said...

Never failed a pee test. Poppy seed is not my favorite but I never worried because I was clean.

Anonymous said...

Strange, I thourht poppy seeds gave the false flag of Opium.. not morphine and codeine.