Local News in Brief : Pension for ‘Beaver’ Actor
Kenneth C. Osmond, also known as wiseacre Eddie Haskell on the “Leave It to Beaver” television series, was granted a Los Angeles Police Department disability pension by Superior Court Judge Kurt Lewin.
The ruling will force the Board of Pension Commissioners to reverse itself and grant the 46-year-old Osmond, a former LAPD motorcycle officer, a service-connected disability pension retroactive to his last day of service.
Osmond joined the Police Department after playing the Beaver’s nemesis on television from 1957 to 1963. He contended that he suffered deep depression after being shot three times by a suspect he was pursuing in September, 1980. His bulletproof vest stopped two slugs and a third ricocheted off his belt buckle.
“All of the psychiatrists agree that (Osmond’s) condition is a real and disabling psychiatric condition,” Lewin said in his ruling. “Nowhere in the administrative record is it suggested that (he) has feigned his symptoms.”
The board had ruled that Osmond was not disabled.
Osmond contended that his condition improved when he was released from duty between September, 1981, and March, 1982, but that it worsened when he went back to work, and he began drinking excessively to relieve the stress. He filed for the pension in 1984.
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