A long-serving Black female detective for the New York Police Department who spent most of last year caring at home for her dying, cancer-ridden mother, with permission from her boss, is now fighting the department and the city’s police pension fund for retirement benefits and trying to stave off criminal charges.
In her complaint filed with the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) in New York on Oct. 6, NYPD Detective Specialist Jaenice Smith, 51, says the department is wrongfully accusing her of “theft of time” for following the work-at-home arrangement authorized by her supervisor, former Assistant Chief Scott M. Henderson.
After three years of caregiving for her mother, who had stage 4 cervical cancer and was undergoing chemotherapy and radiation, while still working at the Patrol Bureau, Brooklyn North, in February 2024, Smith was worn out and went to Henderson, the bureau’s commanding officer, for help.
Henderson instructed her to “stay home with your mother and care for her,” the complaint says, and assured her that his directive constituted departmental approval. On that basis, Smith says she did not apply for family leave or other formal leave.
She also knew that the accommodation offered to her was not unusual in the NYPD, where special leave arrangements were often made for extreme family care circumstances, her attorney Eric Sanders wrote in the complaint.
Her ailing mother, Barbara Ann Smith, was a beloved member of the Bushwick community and had been extensively involved with police-community relations, serving for 28 years as president of the 83rd Precinct Community Council and working closely with borough command, police commissioners and elected officials.
(When she died at age 77 in December 2024, the precinct’s muster room was renamed in her honor, and the New York City Council voted to rename a street in Bushwick Barbara Ann Smith Way, reported the New York Daily News.)
Over the next 10 months, Jaenice Smith devoted herself entirely to caring for her mother, who was fast deteriorating, and began home hospice care. She continued to call in to the bureau and remain available for work, Sanders says, per her agreement with Henderson.
According to her EEOC complaint, other officers in the Brooklyn North borough who were aware of her special accommodation to work from home to care for her terminally ill mother were charged with manually signing Smith in and out of the attendance application each day whenever she called in to say “present for duty” and “end of tour.”
After her mother died on Dec. 6, 2024, Smith, who had experienced caregiver burnout and developed PTSD from watching her mother painfully waste away, asked Henderson if she could use accrued leave and delay her return to work for a few months, a request he allegedly granted.
What she didn’t know until March was that the NYPD’s internal affairs department and its new reform-minded Police Commissioner Jessica S. Tisch had learned of her work-at-home arrangement from an anonymous complaint and commenced an investigation. Smith was reassigned to a desk job, surrendering her service weapon.
After interviewing Henderson, Smith and other officers, obtaining a subpoena to check her phone and bank records, and reviewing license plate readers and cameras near her home to check her movements during working hours, the department concluded that Smith had falsified business records, taken unauthorized leave, and stolen pay and benefits valued at $149,711.
Henderson told investigators that he did not contact the Family Assistance Section to apply for family leave on behalf of Smith because he left such matters to her, and also because he believed it was “in his discretionary authority to provide the accommodation due to the humanitarian circumstances,” the complaint says.
Smith told investigators later that month that she believed Henderson had the authority to allow her to remain at home with her ailing mother, because he said he did.
Her NYPD interviewers also suggested through innuendoes that she had a sexual relationship with Henderson, the complaint contends. Smith denies this and “asserts that such an inference was both offensive and false, reflecting a racially and gender-based stereotype suggesting that Black male executives and Black female subordinates cannot maintain professional relationships without impropriety.”
In June, the department issued formal charges against Smith, including grand larceny in the fourth degree and falsifying business records.
On July 7 Henderson was charged with four instances of misconduct, including that between February 7, 2024 and March 21, 2025 he caused false entries to be made in department records, made false statements, and failed to prepare a Reasonable Accommodations Request.
Henderson negotiated a settlement with the department on July 23 that required him to forfeit accrued managerial leave and to retire effective July 26, with his retirement benefits intact. No felony charges were pursued and his retirement was treated as voluntary.
In contrast, the department “continued to pursue disciplinary and quasi-criminal action against Smith for conduct that was explicitly authorized by Henderson,” which the EEOC complaint deems disparate treatment and “retaliatory escalation.”
Smith was told that unless she “accepted responsibility” and cooperated by signing a pre-drafted retirement agreement, her case would be referred to the Kings County District Attorney for criminal prosecution.
“These threats were made in the absence of probable cause, disciplinary finding or any lawful predicate,” the complaint says, “and designed solely to intimidate [Smith] into forfeiting her employment and retirement rights,” in violation of the Older Workers Benefit Protection Act and the Age Discrimination in Employment Act.
In June, the New York City Police Pension Fund sent Smith a letter clawing back 1.1 years of creditable service and changing the date when she was fully vested for retirement (after 20 years of service) from July 11, 2025, to August 23, 2026.
Sanders, a civil rights attorney who is a retired police officer, calls this “retaliatory pension interference” and a violation of state law, which says only a felony conviction may result in the forfeiture of pension benefits for a member of the Police Pension Fund.
Sanders demanded in a letter to Police Commissioner Tisch on Oct. 3 and in the EEOC complaint that the pension fund change Smith’s effective retirement date to Sept. 11, 2025, and to dismiss the “baseless” disciplinary charges against her.
Smith, who remains employed with the department in an administrative position in Queens, is scheduled for a disciplinary trial at NYPD headquarters on Nov. 5.
“I’m telling the police commissioner that she doesn’t have a right to bring her to trial,” Sanders told Atlanta Black Star. “She hit her 20th year in July. You don’t have a right to unilaterally change her pension time. No one can do that. You need a court order to do that. You can’t just say, ‘Well, I think she engaged in fraud and we’re going to change it.’ No, there’s no law that says you can do that. You can only lose your pension if there’s a felony conviction.”
“Assistant Chief Henderson admitted fault. He kept his pension. Detective Smith faces trial. That is selective enforcement — a system punishing subordinates while shielding superiors,” Sanders posted on X. “It’s not discipline — it’s deterrence. A message to every woman, caregiver, or officer of color: compassion will cost you.”
Smith’s complaint also claims that the department has violated Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, as white officers “who took comparable or more extended periods of leave or received informal accommodations were neither labeled ‘AWOL’ nor referred for criminal investigation.”
“They don’t like the idea that a Black executive gave an accommodation to someone they didn’t want to have an accommodation,” Sanders said. “See, that’s what this case really all about —it’s all about discrimination that’s been going on for years since the turn of time.”
Smith seeks compensatory damages for lost wages, overtime, pension contributions and benefits wrongfully withheld, as well as damages for emotional distress, humiliation, and harm to her reputation. She intends to sue the City of New York, the NYPD and police pension fund in civil court, Sanders said.
The New York Police Department did not immediately respond to a request for comment from Atlanta Black Star about Smith’s EEOC complaint and the pending charges against her. The department and the police pension fund have 30 days to respond to the complaint.
