By George Brown and Ronald Ouellette

 

The Fraternal Order of Police (FOP) and others have been lobbying for over ten years to get Windfall Elimination Provision (WEP) and Government Pension Offset (GPO) Laws repealed.

 

This must be done sooner rather than later.  It has been estimated that as many as a million police officers have been disabled protecting America. Many are suffering physical injuries and illnesses suffered in the line of duty. They and their families are also suffering emotional, social and financial distress.

 

They need help now. It took the United States over one hundred years to repeal similar laws affecting military retirees.  We can no longer take care of these issues after the fact.  It is unfair to put the burden on the backs of disabled law enforcement officers and their families.

 

America likes to think itself to be a country of fair and understanding leaders. Yet, it is hypocritical to ask police, fire and emergency medical personnel to put themselves into harms way and then to abandon them. It is fair to say that permanent disabling injuries condemn these survivors and their families to financial ruin. The men and women serving as the countries first and often only last defense to domestic and foreign terrorism, are the first forgotten when they fall.

 

Why condemn policevets and others to a life of suffering and financial ruin? America has a real identity crisis. In an era of increased uncertainty, we do some strange things. We ship off our best trained public safety officers to guard foreign soil. We create increased danger for those officers that served departments short on manpower from these deployments. We ask more and more of the cops on the street, only to abandon them when they fall. Is it any surprise that American cities are thinking of relaxing hiring standards for police to attract more candidates? Ask yourself, why anyone would want to serve and sacrifice when they will taken for granted.

 

While it is beyond the scope of this article to argue the merits of the law, it needs to be taken off the backs of America’s public safety personnel. The WPO and GPO has always been a lousy law. Its idea was to prevent public employees from collecting twice from the government when they retire. But it totally ignores some basic facts.

 

Public safety personnel that are disabled or suffer occupational injuries never get to dip at all! The retirement schemes throughout this country for the most part give these officers a portion of their current salary. This amount is typically stripped of the overtime and second incomes that these officers need to get by on. They then get at most meager cost of living adjustments that fail to keep pace with inflation and the changing demands that young families face.  Families? Yes, Families!

 

Families have been promised the Public Safety Officer’s Benefit Program and educational assistance for their children of officers injured in the line of duty. This is an outright fraud. The disabled and their families don’t get the money! The law states they’ll be taken care of and the government fails them.

 

Disabled public safety officers resemble those that die in the line of duty. They are young. They have children. They have big mortgages and shallow pockets. They have student loans, car payments, and children to raise and educate. They face a deeper impact on medical insurance as more and more costs are passed onto them. They face another big reality; the agencies don’t pay their medical bills relating to their injuries. Many of these men and women require personal care assistants. No law enforcement agency pays these bills. Instead family members provide the service and lose their economic opportunity as well.

 

And one final thought, these men and women for the most part never enter their prime earning years. They never get to the point where the mortgage payments are comfortable and they have an empty nest with kids educated and self sufficient. Al together we are often left with disabled cops at or below the poverty level. They lose their homes. They’ve failed to educate their children.  More often than not the emotional and financial strain ruins good families. We’ve seen many good men and women suffer early death or die at their own hand to escape the emotional, social and financial hardship of police disability.

 

Many politicians don’t want the WPO and GPO. They are unwilling to make it go away, but it must go away for America’s cops and firefighters. In addition, we have to put a stop to the practice of offsetting public employee’s pensions when Social Security is paid. Additionally, disabled cops across America have earnings limitations and offsets imposed by the very governments that promote inclusion and hiring the disabled.  

 

America needs a national plan to repeal WEP and GPO for public safety personnel. Cops, firefighters and EMS personnel are not getting fat at the expense of the American taxpayer. It is time to reveal this myth as the fraud that it is.

 

How would you feel if you called the police and we did NOT respond? Don’t bother answering that one because cops get fired for turning away from certain danger! Yes, the only choice a cop has is to go where ordered and do what is necessary. They really don’t have the option of telling you that they won’t accept the risk. They do it willingly and America needs to accept the risk by taking care of its disabled servants. The reward… a democratic nation that is has avoided the chaos and lawlessness found throughout the globe.

 

Every year we lose scores of officers to shootings, traffic accidents, occupational illness, and other harmful events. That is not the only cost to this nation as thousands more suffer career ending injuries. It is unfair that we worry about these men and women double dipping. We need to make sure they can drink from the fountain until they are full.

 

It is time to repeal the WPO and GPO. It is an unnecessary burden on law enforcement and public safety as a whole.