Emanuel: ‘A few bad actors’ abusing police disability system
BY FRAN SPIELMAN City Hall Reporter fspielman@suntimes.com July 16, 2012 1:28PM
Updated: October 11, 2012 5:41PM
Mayor Rahm Emanuel blamed “a few bad actors” in the Chicago Police Department on Monday for “taking down” a disability system designed to serve as an insurance policy for officers who perform “difficult, life-threatening jobs.”
Emanuel said he has asked two top aides who sit on the police pension board — Lois Scott, his chief financial officer, and City Comptroller Amer Ahmed — to recommend reforms to address abuses uncovered by the Chicago Sun-Times.
“Everybody knows there’s a few bad actors who are ruining it for everybody else,” the mayor said, adding that disability pay “is not there for a few bad actors to abuse and then take down the system as a whole.”
“Police and fire do very difficult, life-threatening jobs,” the mayor said. “They do very serious work and [disability is] there to protect them.”
The mayor is expected to use the abuses uncovered by the Sun-Times to demand changes during contract negotiations.
