Help injured officers get their due
Bureaucracy shortchanges those who protect us
The Dec. 9 Albuquerque Journal editorial “City needs to step up, do right by wounded officers” was spot on. How can the city’s Risk Management Division justify not paying a wounded officer’s duty-related medical bills in full? These folks are putting their lives on the line for us citizens, and to not have their backs when injured is simply wrong — very wrong!
Injured Albuquerque Police Department officer Lou Golson said, financially, he would be worth more to his family dead than alive. How sad is that! Retired officer Golson had hoped the city would pay him $120,000 for future medical bills and in exchange he would no longer file worker’s compensation claims. He said the city offered $4,000.
Risk Management, at the same time, is denying him treatment recommended by his surgeon, some of which is time-sensitive, meaning that he has, or had, a time window in which he could get repairs done, with a reasonable assurance of success, but due to delays by Workers’ Compensation, that time frame has passed. Unconscionable! I have to ask myself how do the folks at Risk Management and Workers’ Compensation sleep at night? They have assumed adversarial stances from the get-go. This is certainly not the kind of “support” a wounded law enforcement officer deserves.
Corrales police officer Jeremy Romero, severely injured in an auto crash in a high-speed chase when trying to make a traffic stop is in the same situation, likewise is devastated financially under his mounting medical bills.
Mayor Tim Keller wants to increase APD rolls by 400-plus officers. Good luck with that! Who in their right mind would want to become a police officer or a firefighter, knowing full well, if injured in the line of duty, they would be on their own to cover their medical bills?
Four years ago Bernalillo County Sheriff’s Deputy Robin Hopkins had her leg shattered in Los Ranchos by a gunman while on duty, and the thanks she received was having to undergo major financial hardship, including a subsequent pay cut. I was so moved by her positive attitude throughout her ordeal that I contributed a monthly donation for a year through a Bank of America trust fund that was set up to help cover her mounting medical bills. The YMCA of Central N.M., of which I am a board member, even offered her a free membership to help with the physical therapy.
Surely my monthly donation barely made a dent in her expenses, but nonetheless I am in the process of making arrangements to do the same for both officers Golson and Romero to help with their medical bills. I implore anyone who is as incensed with the City Risk Management and Workers’ Compensation bureaucracy as I am, to step up and donate to this cause. Collectively, monies accrued, may have a significant impact on the burden they are facing. It is the least we can do. Please join me in this effort.