There is a very important matter up for a vote at the May 2nd Town Meeting that we ask you to consider.
Last year, a man named Adrian Lima murdered an ex-girlfriend and shot the ex-girlfriend's current girlfriend as well. Doubling down, he then fired upon the Bourne Police Department when they arrived to investigate. Lima was eventually taken into custody.
Before they gaffled him, Lima managed to shoot a Bourne Police officer, Jared MacDonald. MacDonald was hit in the back, just under his protective vest. The gunshot resulted in critical injury to MacDonald, and he is now unable to do his job.
Normally, if you get a debilitating injury on the job, the job has to take care of you. It's a no-brainer, one of the chief coups of the organized labor movement spawned during the Industrial Revolution.
However, there are differences between an injured cop and, say, an injured factory worker. The factory worker, if he suffers an injury, can almost always tie it to either employee or employer negligence.... "He stuck his head under a piledriver" or "The shabby scaffolding collapsed." It makes for an easier determination of Fault.
With cops, there is an additional variable. Very few factory workers are shot by crazy people. Police? They sort of dabble in crazy people as a trade. Sometimes, crazy people get guns, and sometimes they manage to shoot a cop.
That doesn't change the scenario much for an injured police officer. He showed up for the job, did what he was supposed to do, but still suffered an injury. That much is easy. However, his status as a public servant with essentially 20,000 people as his employer means that the town has to vote to give him benefits.
That vote goes down at the Monday, May 2nd town meeting, at Bourne High School. 7 PM, citizen.
This should be a no-brainer. I'm technically a criminal, but I am not only voting for the policeman to get his retirement, I'm writing an article urging you to do so as well. That's a fairly strong endorsement right there, albeit one coming from the proverbial Low Road.
Cops are unique people, tasked with a ridiculously dangerous job. If your baby is trapped in a burning building, a cop will run into the building to get it. If the building has explosives in it, is surrounded by a leopard pen and guarded by ISIL... the cop is still going in. You can argue that with me, but I have a Bourne cop with a bullet in his back as Exhibit A.
You get that sort of bravery for a relatively minor salary... many people give close to as much money to Bob Kraft, Walt Disney or Rihanna over the course of a year as they pay in taxes to employ a cop.
There is a flip-side to that low salary. If the cop gets a debilitating injury, the community should take care of him. If I were a Bourne cop and watched the town vote against giving benefits to a fellow cop who was shot protecting Bourne's citizens... well, let's say that I might wait for some backup before I run through the theoretical Taliban's leopard pen to get that baby out of the burning building.
However, many cops would STILL run the gauntlet after such a vote, but that would be because they are brave, principled or both.... which is even more of a reason to vote to take care of your own.
"Officer MacDonald's retirement needs to be voted on because he was shot in the line of duty making him eligible to receive a specific retirement above the standard medical retirement. This retirement package is the same as other officers in the state that have been shot in the line of duty. This retirement package has to be approved by the town." (Get Well Bourne Police Officer Jared MacDonald Facebook page)
Taking care of an injured cop/soldier/firefighter/EMT is perhaps our most solemn unspoken social contract. They run into Hell to rescue you... you can run down to the high school Monday night (May 2nd, at 7 PM) and cast a vote to show that you appreciate it.
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