t’s just another day that starts with you suiting up, loading and holstering your weapon and heading out the door for patrol. It’s an experience that thousands of cops share every day. Until, one day, that weapon goes off and takes out a piece of your hand as it did in the case of a brother officer named John Caban.

But this isn’t a cautionary tale about safety practices in the locker room. It’s an object lesson in how unions must stand together in the face of a management that will stop at nothing, even disregarding the law, to deny a clearly deserved accident disability pension.

I’ll skip the t/p/o details and get right to the heart of the matter. Caban recovered from the injury and went back full duty after rehabilitation. He did get a command discipline but the Firearms Discharge Review Board determined that it was an accident so no charges were filed.

About a year later, during a collar of an uncooperative perp, he injured the same hand. Again, after another rehab he returned to full duty. Later, wrestling with a perp, he injured the hand again and the medical division determined that he suffered a disability. So he filed for the disability pension to which he was obviously entitled.

The police pension board, of which I am a member, reviews cases to determine if an injury was accidental, resulting in a 3/4-pay pension, or incidental, resulting in a 1/2-pay pension. Cases are decided by a vote of the board. The city’s board members — the finance commissioner, the comptroller, the mayor and the police commissioner — have a vote-and-a-half each for a total of six. The PBA’s president, two vice presidents and its pension board chairperson have one vote each, while the DEA, SBA, LBA and CEA have half a vote each, also totaling six.

Usually, there’s a healthy discussion in these matters but in Caban’s case, the city’s reps were so unreasonable in their opposition to an accidental disability pension that they forced a very unusual reaction from the unions’ side of the table.

There’s been a palpable change in the atmosphere surrounding these meetings lately. We’re all very aware of the Bloomberg administration’s lust to reduce pension costs for future hires, but pension cost-cutting attitude now pervades these meetings as well. The city now seems willing to do almost anything to avoid awarding an accidental disability pension, and John Caban’s case is a perfect illustration. Even when the record, case law, past practice and common sense dictate otherwise, the city is opposing accident disability pensions.

The city’s argument centered on the original gunshot wound that a city rep interpreted as having been caused by the officer’s negligence.

That, in the city’s view, should disqualify him for the accidental classification. When the union’s attorney and I challenged the city’s reasoning, its reps refused or were unable to point to any evidence in the record of a willfully negligent act on the officer’s part, while we had the firearms report calling it an accident. The PBA’s attorney made a strong legal argument and I argued that denying Caban the accidental disability flew in the face of past practice and would be an arbitrary and capricious decision.

The city held fast in its resistance, evaded the facts in its arguments, and pushed for a vote in an apparent attempt to use the pressure to resolve the case as an incentive for one of the unions’ reps to vote on their side. But the city clearly underestimated our resolve and we decided to caucus (which permits us to meet to discuss the case privately). In caucus, all union representatives agreed to walk out. When the city’s side realized we had walked, it was forced to suspend the meeting and, ultimately, to seek the city’s law department’s opinion in the matter.

The law department’s two-page decision found that the city’s position in arguing against Caban’s accidental disability pension was indefensible and that if he was denied the accidental disability pension, it would most certainly be overturned by the courts. On May 13, Police Officer John Caban, who had given good and valuable service to New York City and its citizens and was disabled as a result, was granted a disability pension. And therein lies the value of union solidarity.