Bi-partisan bills to assist the law enforcement community and their families are signed into law with very little mention in the mainstream media.
A day after announcing his decision to pull the United States out of the Paris Climate Accord, President Trump found himself seated at a table in front of a backdrop of law enforcement big-wigs from around the country. The purpose of the press event wasn’t for a President to address civil unrest following a white police officer shooting a black male or for a politician to issue some empty epithet about how the latest murder of a cop was “an attack on all of us”, as Hillary Clinton and others have done in the past.
In fact, the event wasn’t a response to any specific incident that had become a national talking point, buzzword, or clickbait for the masses. The purpose of Trump sitting at a table in the White House Diplomatic Reception Room with presidential pen in hand was to ratify two bi-partisan bills that aim to benefit public safety professionals and their families throughout the country for years to come.
When I wrote Standing Up for Our Law Enforcement Community back in February, I detailed how the previous administration’s whitehouse.gov “top issues” had a new pro-law enforcement look under President Trump. I also covered the other major shifts in focus detailed on an official Whitehouse website suddenly centered around America First initiatives. For example, no one should be surprised about President Trump divorcing the United States from the Paris Climate Accord as his doing was the very lynchpin of the administration’s America First Energy Plan. Next, there’s Trump’s America First Foreign Policy. I’ve had trouble understanding the rationale behind bombing a Syrian airfield that seemed to be the only Assad Regime turf standing between Christians and the ISIS jihadists attacking them, but we’ve seen Trump post wins over China in the form of trade concessions and President Xi Jinping’s signaling that the Red Dragon will curb its enabling of North Korea. Coupled with the “Pittsburg, not Paris” Paris Accord speech, America First foreign policy has certainly has not been a bust.
Standing Up for Our Law Enforcement Community sits firmly at number 5 on the administration’s whitehouse.gov top issues list, and yesterday’s event was all about demonstrating that they have not forgotten about it. The first of two newly minted laws signed was the American Law Enforcement Heroes Act. The Heroes Act allows police agencies receiving federal grants through the Justice Department’s Community Oriented Policing Services (COPS) program to direct funds towards hiring military veteran police officers. The bill will free up more money to enrich departments with quality personnel and create more jobs for veterans at the same time. In a perfect world, the money saved by departments would be used to write bigger paychecks to officers.
OpsLens writer, Stephen Owsinski, penned a phenomenal article on the viability of military veterans transitioning into police work entitled From Camo to Blue: Military Preference In Police Recruiting Speaks For Itself. He is absolutely right in his assessment. I won’t even try to capture it better than he did.
I want to focus on the second of the two bills signed into law instead. The Public Safety Officers’ Benefits Improvement Act is a true bi-partisan effort, making it an increasingly rare breed of animal these days. It was co-sponsored by Republican Rep. Chuck Grassley and Democratic Rep. Kirsten Gillibrand, authored by Democrat Rep. Patrick Leahy, and produced by Republican Rep. John Cornyn and Democratic Rep. Amy Klobuchar. Let’s dive in.
The Public Safety Officers’ Benefits Program was originally established by Congress back in 1976 to compensate families of police officers and other public safety professionals killed or permanently disabled in the line of duty – but according to Leahy, “The PSOB program unfortunately has been plagued by unnecessary delays in processing benefits.” As of March of this year, there were 756 active claims before the PSOB, and the program has been inefficient – to say the least – in dolling out critical benefits to qualifying families who have suffered a catastrophic loss.
When Leahy talks about “unnecessary delays”, he is referencing the long waiting periods that have diverted surviving children of deceased officers from their path of attending college into getting a job to help pay their surviving parent’s bills instead. These crawling delays have also prevented widows from being able to pay mortgages, as well as handcuffed officers no longer capable of working from paying medical bills.
Before I go on, I want to clarify something. Some might think that I sound awfully entitled to be expecting the government to quickly and efficiently assist with my family’s financial situation if I should catch a bullet, be struck by a car, drown in a lake, fall from a building, or die in any other fashion that about 140 of us do per year while on the clock. My only response is this. A benefit like PSOB is one of the only things that I can reflect on to justify chasing around bad guys with guns for a living for the amount of compensation I receive. I’m lucky if I break 50k/year, but the Federal government will pay out 350k should I go out on my shield. Add the local Police Foundation policy that I’m lucky to have and both the Georgia Peace Officer Annuity and Benefits Fund and life insurance policies that I pay into – and a sad truth emerges. I’m worth more to my family dead than I am alive. Lord if you’re going to take me, do it while I’m in Kevlar!
There are obviously more ways to measure worth than income, but the fact remains that most police officers – especially those working in the southeast United States – are not raking in the kind of bucks to financially protect their families in the event that they should have an untimely departure while doing a dangerous job for the betterment of society. The Public Safety Officer Benefits Program was created over 40 years ago to be a godsend, so let’s get back to the new law that’s going to make it great again.
While the PSOB’s stated goal is to process all claims within one year of filing, 42% of them fail to reach it. It’s not uncommon for families to wait 2-3 years to receive help, which is bad enough – but then there are the real horror stories. Indiana Volunteer Firefighter Leonard Murray died on the job in 2012 when he was run over by a fire engine on a call. His family is still waiting to find out if they will receive anything from the Fed five years later. Leonard Murray volunteered his own time and dedicated himself to serving others. Tragically, he lost his life doing it. This law will prevent more families like the Murrays from suffering through an incompetent and molasses-slow bureaucracy by forcing competency and transparency on the government bureaucrats assigned to their cases – thereby holding them accountable to those in the horrid situation of having to file in the first place.
In typical Trump fashion, the President jokingly alluded to his heretical scrapping of the #1 religious text for the Church of Manmade Global Warming by saying that Friday’s signings were “slightly less controversial than yesterday”. He also made some serious comments about the bills he was passing. While sitting in front of officers from departments out of Maryland, Pennsylvania, Ohio, California, and Virginia, Trump said this:
“For too long, injured officers have suffered, and the children of fallen officers have put their dreams of college on hold while bureaucracy delayed crucial benefits…made it impossible for their families…No longer. It’s unacceptable, and it’s going to end today.”
Now that, ladies and gentlemen, is called “standing up for our law enforcement community”.
