FAT BLUE LINE
Being a cop made me hefty — so I deserve disability pay!
José Vega ,46, blames his 360-pound frame on the stress of being a city cop — and is suing the NYPD to get tax-free disability pay equaling threequarters of his department salary.
Maybe it was the doughnuts.
An obese city cop got a hefty pension when he retired on disability at age 43, but he’s still hungry for more dough — so he’s suing the NYPD, claiming the job made him corpulent.
“The job is like a tyrant,’’ said ex-NYPD Officer José Vega, who stands 5-foot-10 and tips the scales at 360 pounds.
“I went from 250 to 395 pounds in one year — I guarantee you, as small as you are, you eat more than me,” he told a Post reporter Tuesday, insisting it was the slew of health problems caused by the stress of his former police job that led to his weight gain, not his eating habits.
Vega, 46, a former Marine, said that when he first joined the department in 1997, he weighed in at a trim 180 pounds.
“My goal was to become a firstgrade detective and homicide detective,’’ he said.
“[But] they brainwashed you: ‘Go out and make arrests.’ The job would emphasize arrests without concern for any officer’s health,’’ said the former cop, who worked in the Bronx’s 42nd Precinct.
Vega’s lawyer, Warren Roth, said it’s clear that the job of a cop isn’t conducive to healthy eating.
“It’s easier to pull into McDonald’s and wolf something down when you’re busy,’’ Roth said.
Vega, now 46, said that when he first started to gain weight on the job, “it was weird.”
“It was like, ‘Man, I’m going through pants sizes.’ I definitely thought something was wrong, and it wasn’t a change in my diet. Doctors said I was retaining fluid because of my heart condition.”
He said that through it all, he was always a good cop.
“[But] it seemed once they had a guy like me, they used and abused you. The more you did, the more they burdened you with.’’
Vega said he finally called it quits in 2014, retiring on a $4,000-amonth disability pension.
The next year he applied for three-quarters disability — or a $6,200-a-month pension — arguing that his debilitating condition was caused by his police work.
But the medical board determined that only about 10 percent of his medical condition was related to job stress.
“They acknowledged my condition, but they didn’t care,’’ Vega said.
“I know some people who have gotten disability pensions for a damaged pinkie finger, and here I am with a main organ in my body [the heart] that’s defective, and I’m being denied.’’
He said his obesity came from ventricular hypertrophy.
“It’s when you suffer from hypertension. Your heart starts to thicken. It’s from stress,’’ Vega said.
“I’m not a diabetic . . . I don’t eat nothing sweet,” he said.
“I have a green tea at 7 in the morning with honey. At 9 I have a fruit. At noon I have four ounces of lean meat with carrots or broccoli or cauliflower,’’ he insisted.
“Then at 4 o’clock I eat the same thing. Then before the night, I will eat an apple or a banana. I snack on peanuts. Not sugar.”
The NYPD declined to comment on the suit. A city Law Department rep said, “We’ll review Mr. Vega’s complaint.”