Somewhere, there is probably a “Wounded Heroes in Blue” roster that pays tribute to former New Jersey police officer Christopher Onesti, who retired on disability in 2006 following an on-duty incident in which he injured the ring finger of his left hand on a target range.
That injury was gun-inflicted, in a sense: Onesti, a former transit cop, perforated the finger while using a staple gun to secure a paper target. Undaunted, the valiant officer applied a band-aid and continued shooting without noticeable difficulty. Yet he was designated “totally and completely disabled” and retired at age 29.
Despite that supposed handicap, the plucky hero continues to pursue his shooting hobby. Unlike his betters in the productive class, Onesti has ample free time to indulge in recreation: He is collecting a tax-free disability pension of $46,000 a year – an amount nearly equivalent to his salary. His lifetime pension will cost tax victims in New Jersey at least $2.3 million.
Asked about this absurdly lucrative pension by reporters from a New Jersey TV station, Onesti shrugged and replied, “My lawyer said I was entitled to it…. It’s not a question of [whether] I deserve [it], it’s a question of what the law says.”
Perhaps not surprisingly, Onesti has moved to Pennsylvania, most likely to put some distance between himself and the public he supposedly served as a police officer.
UPDATE
The original title of this essay used the term “whore” in a way that was needlessly offensive. I sincerely apologize for insulting peaceful, honest entrepreneurs (whatever one thinks of the transactions involved, when consensual they are not criminal in nature) by comparing them to someone who was paid to commit aggressive violence before taking up a life of subsidized indolence.
12:46 pm on December 16, 2013
