By John Marzulli New York Daily News
A retired NYPD chief has been approved for a tax-free disability pension related to the 9/11 attacks after he was forced to resign in disgrace last year as Nassau County’s top cop, the Daily News has learned.
Thomas Dale, 64, has cancer and convinced a panel of NYPD doctors that the illness resulted from exposure to toxic Ground Zero and has rendered him disabled, sources said. It is unclear when the illness was diagnosed.
The full pension board will vote Wednesday on Dale’s pension, and if approved, he would pocket an estimated $199,000 annually — tax-free.
Dale, a 40-year NYPD vet, was canned in December for using his influence as police commissioner to arrest a witness in a politically motivated case in Nassau County.
Dale was the NYPD’s chief of personnel in 2012 when he left with a “service retirement” to take the post in Long Island.
Eligible cops have to prove they were at Ground Zero within 48 hours of the attack, or subsequently spent 40 hours working either south of Canal St., at the city morgue or at the Staten Island landfill where debris was sifted for human remains.
“I wish the chief well, but a lot of other cops suffering from cancers as a result of 9/11 are not getting approved for disability pensions,” said lawyer and pension expert Jeffrey Goldberg.
“Chief Dale responded to Ground Zero on 9/11/2001 to defend our country and was exposed to numerous cancer causing toxins,” said Roy Richter, president of the Captains Endowment Association. “The disability law is one way the city acknowledges Chief Dale’s heroism and compensates him for the years of chemotherapy he has endured.”
