Now Taxpayers Are Stressed : Long Beach grants stress-disability retirement to two cops in sting case

Two Long Beach police officers appearing--on videotape--to violate the civil rights of an activist will receive stress disability payments for life, city officials have decided. The source of this debilitating stress? Psychological problems stemming from their own alleged misconduct. Go figure.

In question is the case of Don Jackson, African-American activist and a former police officer who set out to show through a sting operation that police brutality against blacks was still a major problem. In January, 1989, hidden NBC cameras videotaped Long Beach police officers’ arrest of Jackson and one officer’s apparent assault. Officer Mark Dickey appeared to push Jackson’s head through a plate-glass window. Dickey was charged with misdemeanor assault; he and Officer Mark Ramsey were also charged with allegedly lying about the incident.

Citing stress-related illness from the incident, the city granted Dickey and Ramsey half of their pay for life. Dickey is 29; Ramsey is 28.

A trial in January will determine the guilt or innocence on the criminal charges. But whatever the outcome, stress disability retirements in cases like these are enough to set anyone’s teeth on edge. Half salaries for the two young officers will cost taxpayers more than $36,000 every year for decades. The very thought is outrageous. What sort of mixed message is Long Beach or any city sending in a case like this? How can such disability retirements not be seen by many as almost a reward for alleged police misconduct?

Yet the city may have had no choice. While city officials were tight-lipped about the matter, some suggested that since city doctors agreed with the finding of the officers’ doctors--that Dickey and Ramsey could not continue to do police work--the city had to grant disability retirements. Yet Dickey and Ramsey are free to work other jobs.

Go figure. At the very least, better police training probably figures in here somewhere. It certainly is cheaper. And a lot less galling.