Newtown cop who responded to Sandy Hook could be fired

Newtown Police Chief Michael Kehoe Newtown Police Chief Michael Kehoe Photo: Carol Kaliff Photo: Carol Kaliff Image 1 of / 3 Caption Close Newtown cop who responded to Sandy Hook could be fired 1 / 3 Back to Gallery

NEWTOWN -- A police officer diagnosed with post traumatic stress disorder after the Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting faces possible termination because he has been unable to return to work.

Tom Bean, a 12-year department veteran, is 100 percent permanently disabled as a result of what he saw at the school on Dec. 14, according to his doctor. In June he had received a letter from Police Chief Michael Kehoe to "discuss the issue of whether termination of your employment is necessary due to the medical disability."

Union officials and Bean subsequently met with the chief and no resolution was reached, according to police union attorney Eric Brown.

Union officials said Thursday they expect Bean to be fired because the town doesn't want to pick up the cost of paying half of his salary until he is eligible to retire, even though that's what they say is mandated by the union contract. He would be eligible to retire in another 13 years.

"We fully expect them to terminate him because they didn't give him any other option," police union President Scott Ruszczyk said. "It's either quit or retire under medical leave."

Experts in the field have said it could take up to two years for symptoms of PTSD to show up, Brown said.

But either choice would leave Bean in the same place, without a job and without an income.

"Everybody knows that Tom Bean is the first one, not the last one," he said. "The likelihood is there are going to be more."

Although he is currently on long-term disability and collecting half his approximately $70,000 annual salary, the benefits will run out after two years, Ruszczyk said.

"The town's deal with the union is to pay until the retirement date, but the town has an insurance policy that doesn't cover that," Ruszczyk said.

As a result, the town would be on the hook for about $350,000 until Bean is eligible to retire, the union president said.

Bean was off duty when he responded to the school and was one of the officers who went inside the building where 20-year-old Adam Lanza gunned down 20 first-graders and six staff members. As a result, he told a New York Times interviewer earlier this year, he is unable to work and needed medication to sleep.

Ruszczyk said Kehoe told the union that continuing to carry Bean on the department's roster left him unable to hire another officer to fill his position, even though the union was willing to sign a side agreement permitting him to do so.

Kehoe couldn't be reached for comment Thursday.

A final decision on Bean's status would be up to the Police Commission, but Brown accused First Selectman Pat Llodra of standing in the way of any agreement.

"The first selectmen is who's making the call. She's the one who didn't get the right insurance," he said.

Llodra declined to comment on Bean's case Thursday, but said the proper forum for any agreement is through negotiations with the town's attorney.

"That's where it belongs, in negotiations," she said. "Not in the newspaper."

Brown predicted that disability coverage would be a recurring issue in the coming years, as more than a dozen officers who responded to the Sandy Hook shooting were forced to miss work in the succeeding months.