Comments on: Spokane: we won’t pay off cop over DUI hit-run

By: Michael Burke

Michael Burke — Wed, 11 Apr 2012 20:19:47 +0000

During the time that the ADA was being considered and debated, there were anarhco-free enterprise-individualists, comme moi, who prognosticated that public sector employees would not be bashful about asking for more via the legislation.

By: mjs

mjs — Wed, 11 Apr 2012 00:03:44 +0000

Another exhibit in the increasingly compelling case to reform all disability laws……………

By: mojo

mojo — Tue, 10 Apr 2012 21:51:02 +0000

Would BevMo coupons be acceptable as compensation?

By: John Burgess

John Burgess — Tue, 10 Apr 2012 21:33:28 +0000

@gitarcarver: I could see letting him recover, but only if the civil suit by the family of the person he hit recovers $375,000 from him. The payment would remove him from the ‘judgment proof’ category.

By: gitarcarver

gitarcarver — Tue, 10 Apr 2012 20:27:29 +0000

I am really trying to understand this.

Cop goes out, drives while drunk, hits something, and leaves the scene of the accident. He doesn’t get prosecuted (most likely because he is a cop) but he loses his job. Yet because of the DUI and leaving the scene, he can’t work as a cop anymore because it would be foreseeable that as a drunk, he would run over someone leaving the city on the hook for that lawsuit.

In 2011, the law changes, allowing him to get his job back, and so he sues for $275,000 in back pay?

For one year of lost work?

I am with the Councilman…. not only “no,” “hell no.”

By: Richard Nieporent

Richard Nieporent — Tue, 10 Apr 2012 19:33:57 +0000

Attorney Bob Dunn, representing former officer Brad Thoma, said “his client was fired after the city refused to accommodate Thoma following a doctor’s diagnosis of alcoholism.

They refused to provide him with free beer. 🙂

By: boblipton

boblipton — Tue, 10 Apr 2012 19:25:49 +0000

What’s reasonable? There are several dictionary definitions, but the one people use when they say things like “Why can’t you be reasonable?” is “What I want.” What this guy wants is $275,000 and his job back. Why can’t they be reasonable?

Bob

By: CTrees

CTrees — Tue, 10 Apr 2012 19:06:22 +0000

IANAL, but doesn’t the ADA only require reasonable accomodation? I can think of nothing reasonable which would allow a person so alcoholic as to be prone to drunk driving to continue driving and carrying a firearm as a profession.

Stick him in a desk job with no police-car privileges and no weapon, sure, I could accept that. I tend to think the most reasonable accomodation for most of these addictions is time off to go through rehab, but

By: gasman

gasman — Tue, 10 Apr 2012 15:43:46 +0000

Too many behavioral patterns are becoming diseases.

So we are stuck with alcoholism as a ‘disease’ in the medical model of things. He cannot control his drinking. But where does it state that he has drivaholism? Driving with the impairment is a volitional choice; a poor one, but a choice freely made nevertheless. And it does not reflect well on the qualifications of an individual who want public license to choose when to use deadly force.