CHICAGO — The Chicago Police Department and its pension board have now each determined that former Officer Danny Golden was performing official police duties just before he was shot and paralyzed outside a bar in the Beverly neighborhood nearly two years ago.

It’s a decision that came months after Golden applied for on-duty disability benefits in December, highlighting what can appear to outsiders as a subjective process with no hard and fast rules on how long it may take to reach that decision, or which officers or their families are certain to receive them.

Pension board meetings to rule on duty disability applications are open to the public. CPD, meanwhile, will make its own determination as to whether an officer was injured “in the line of duty,” though the process is opaque. Superintendent Larry Snelling said last week that any officer, whether working a shift or not, can be injured in the line of duty so long as they are responding to “criminal activity.”

It was not known when the Police Department ruled Golden’s injuries to be duty-related, but his pension board application was approved at the board’s March meeting. He applied for on-duty disability benefits about two months after his allotted medical leave time ended, records show.

An officer is not required to be on duty and in uniform for their injuries — or death — to have occurred in the line of duty. Shortly after the killings of off-duty Officers Luis Huesca last month and Aréanah Preston last year, CPD announced both died in the line of duty.

Key facts often vary. Golden had been at the bar where the altercation that ended in gunfire took place, for example, while Huesca and Preston were both killed in attempted robberies as they each returned home following a work shift.

While announcing charges last Friday in Huesca’s killing, Snelling said the “line of duty” designation is applied “based on how officers respond” in off-duty situations.

“Any time an officer is faced with criminal activity, being attacked, and that officer responds physically in any way, shape, form or fashion, he is now acting as a police officer,” Snelling said.

Huesca was killed April 21 near his home in the Gage Park neighborhood. He was still in uniform as he was arriving home from work, and his gun was taken along with his car.

The Police Department announced just two days later that Huesca died in the line of duty, entitling his family to survivors’ death benefits.

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