For a couple of weeks after the Newtown horror last December, I couldn’t get enough information online about what was going on, from the morbid — Were there surveillance cameras at the school? — to the brazen — ‘Tis a false flag operation! — to the mundane — What kind of car was Lanza driving? I was Googling stuff left and right, well after the Wolf Blitzers of the world pulled out. I had a brief phase like that during the early part of the summer too; that ‘lonely quiet’ article in The Washington Post was amazing. I hadn’t thought about the events of Newtown much since probably July, although I’m sure this December (the one-year) will be tough for America collectively (minus the fucknuts who think it was a ‘false flag’ operation because of stuff like Christopher Rodia). We’ll probably see a lot of these families back in the news:
The new story associated with Newtown is that of Thomas Bean, a cop who responded to the tragedy on his day off, saw abject horror, was diagnosed with PTSD, and now might be fired from the police department. The police department is claiming he’s “permanently disabled” and can be fired; Bean and his lawyer are saying Newtown only has two years of disability payments they can shell out, whereas Bean has 12 years left before retirement age. A lawsuit is possibly going to happen, via the union that represents Newtown police officers:
“The men and women of the Newtown Police Department who did respond that day did their job,” said Scott Ruszczyk, the union president. “They lived up to their end of their contract. It’s now time for the town to live up to their end.”
Joe Aresimowicz, the Connecticut House majority leader, explained to CNN that for mental care to be covered by long-term disability, it needs to be accompanied by physical ailments as well. The comments on versions of this article, i.e. The Huffington Post, are pretty intense. There are online petitions now as well. As many are saying on Twitter, ’tis not an easy one:
This is not an easy one – Newtown Cop Thomas Bean: ‘That Day Killed Me Inside’ « CBS New York http://t.co/UCvXCw5mvz #tbcot
— Erick L Berg (@or2duck) November 13, 2013
https://twitter.com/mjberner/status/400503079834886145
In The Hartford Courant, most ‘letters to the editor’ are in favor of Bean: here and here. This could just be a fiscal issue, but in America, there’s always more money somewhere for something like this. I don’t believe this dude is milking the system in any way; to go back to something I referenced at the top of this post, most mainstream media reports indicate that within a few months prior to the shooting, Sandy Hook Elementary did get new surveillance equipment. There’s even reports that people in the office saw him accessing the front door via the same equipment. Point is, footage likely exists. Why hasn’t it been leaked? Because it’s that fucking awful. Now imagine going into the aftermath of that, like Bean did. Could you really be back on the job, grinding day-in and day-out, after that? I suppose the flip side argument is that dozens of other cops went in to that scene — and the state coroner dealt with a lot more than that — and all of them are presumably still doing their jobs. Humans respond differently to different situations, though. I do believe the PTSD is real, and I do believe Bean is owed something — maybe not the entire 12 years, but something. I just hope he finds something to do with himself after this is ultimately resolved to provide a measure of internal peace.
And now, because it was fairly interesting, here’s the full PBS Frontline on Adam Lanza.
