Todays T&G has the story of Lt. Timothy J. O’Connor’s retirement from the WPD amidst a MA AG investigation of the alleged overtime abuse the Lt was accused of. This is the only sentence in the story that matters and is worth repeating:
City officials would only say the 25-year veteran of the force is no longer employed by the city, while union officer Sgt. Donald E. Cummings said the lieutenant retired because he was physically unable to return to work because of a heart condition.
Here’s the relevant text of MGL Chapter 32 Section 94, also known as “the Heart Bill”:
Notwithstanding the provisions of any general or special law to the contrary affecting the non-contributory or contributory system, any condition of impairment of health caused by hypertension or heart disease resulting in total or partial disability or death to a uniformed member of a paid fire department or permanent member of a police department, or of the police force of the Massachusetts Bay Transportation Authority, or of the state police, or of the public works building police, or to any employee in the department of correction or a county correctional facility whose regular or incidental duties require the care, supervision or custody of prisoners, criminally insane persons or defective delinquents, or to any permanent crash crewman, crash boatman, fire controlman or assistant fire controlman employed at the General Edward Lawrence Logan International Airport, or members of the Massachusetts military reservation fire department, shall, if he successfully passed a physical examination on entry into such service, or subsequently successfully passed a physical examination, which examination failed to reveal any evidence of such condition, be presumed to have been suffered in the line of duty, unless the contrary be shown by competent evidence.
As used in this section the words “permanent member of a police department” shall include a permanent member of the park police of a city or town.
Enjoy your tax free pension Lt O’Connor. Apparently the rule of law still only applies to those of us stuck on the other side of that imaginary, thin blue line.
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Y’know Buck, it really is beginning to look like it’s all about the pensions. No matter which one of the WPD issues that’ve come up in the past year, the most significant factor weighed in any decision to let one of these guys go could very well be whether their pension is secured or not…
And to a degree I get that, I’ve always taken the line of reasoning that you can’t have a system that has existed since before most of these men and women were born and hold it against them. But this is just silly.
A plan to get the city of Worcester some revenue.
Fire 50 policemen, firemen, and school administrators making 80-100k a piece.
Oh, and then dissolve all unions and invent the money tree.