Sometimes... it's REALLY FUCKING HARD to be non-violent.
Tired...
Sometimes... it's REALLY FUCKING HARD to be non-violent.
Tired...
A Little History On James Zadroga
Saying James Zadroga isn’t a hero is like saying Michael Boomberg isn’t the mayor, George Bush isn’t the president, and Christine Todd Whitman never lied. The sad fact is all three are true, and all three have played a part in the death of a NYPD hero, and countless others. In closing, science says Bush has no brains Bloomberg has no heart, and Whitman has no regard towards human life. - John Feal
By Jon Gold
10/31/2007
On 1/7/2006, it was reported that "a police detective has died from lung disease, which the NYPD believes he contracted while working at Ground Zero after the 9/11 attacks." [...] "The tragedy makes James Zadroga, 34, the first rescue worker to die from illness attributed to the Ground Zero rubble, a police spokesperson said yesterday." [...] "He was a hero, he disregarded his own health and life to rescue people at Ground Zero," said Michael Palladino, head of the Detectives' Endowment Association."
On 4/12/2006, the Zadroga family released the findings of the NJ Medical Examiner. It said, "It is felt with a reasonable degree of medical certainty that the cause of death in this case was directly related to the 9/11 incident," wrote Gerard Breton, a pathologist at the Ocean County (New Jersey) medical examiner's office in the February 28 autopsy."
On 10/1/2007, it was reported that "the U.S. 2nd Circuit Court of Appeals, which sits in Manhattan, will hear oral arguments today on whether the city is immune from lawsuits brought by the thousands of firefighters, police officers, and construction workers who searched for survivors and cleaned up on the site of the World Trade Center." After hearing the oral arguments, the three judges on the panel decided that they would let the law suits go through.
On 10/16/2007, it was reported that "New York City is willing to enter discussions to settle a lawsuit with 9,000 rescue and cleanup workers at the World Trade Center disaster site who may be sick from inhaling toxic dust."
On 10/17/2007, it was reported that "with about 9,000 claimants, the average payout would be some $66,000 per worker, not nearly enough to cover medical bills and lost wages, particularly in the case of deaths." That meant that the settlement probably wasn't going to be accepted, and the trials were going to go ahead. Which meant that the money they might pay out would be staggering compared to the settlement.
On 10/19/2007, after being asked by Joseph Zadroga, James Zadroga's father, to verify the NJ Medical Examiner's findings so Joseph would be listed as a victim of 9/11, Dr. Charles Hirsch, the NY Medical Examiner said that "it is our unequivocal opinion, with certainty beyond doubt, that the foreign material in your son's lungs did not get there as the result of inhaling dust at the World Trade Center or elsewhere." [...] "Mayor Michael Bloomberg distanced himself from the medical examiner's office in a statement Thursday, saying the independent agency made its own decisions. The city is defending itself in a lawsuit filed by thousands of workers who say they were not properly protected from the dust that made them sick. Bloomberg has also lobbied the federal government for millions of dollars to treat and monitor the ailing workers. The medical examiner's "determination in this case does nothing to change New York City's commitment to make sure that all who were affected by 9/11 get the health care they need," Bloomberg said."
On 10/23/2007, it was reported that the NY Medical Examiner's claim was that James Zadroga died from "intravenous drug injections." Essentially saying that James Zadroga was a junky, and that's why he died.
On 10/25/2007, it was reported that, "Joseph Zadroga said the former detective was taking more than a dozen medications when he died, including anti-anxiety medicine and painkillers including OxyContin, but never ground up pills and injected them. He said he kept his son's medication locked in a safe in their New Jersey home and said his son was not capable of taking medicine himself. "His mother and I were taking care of him," Joseph Zadroga said. "He wasn't ever able to correctly take his medication."
On 10/25/2007, it was reported that, "the New York City Medical Examiner concluded last week that the foreign matter found in Zadroga's lungs definitely did not come from dust generated at the World Trade Center site. That conclusion will create extra hurdles for lawmakers trying to get the federal government to pay for treatment for ailing Ground Zero workers."
On 10/26/2007, it was reported that, "Zadroga died despite excellent medical care, and his autopsy found that his lungs were filled with substances that hung in the air over The Pile. Among them, carbon, silica, calcium phosphate - found in concrete - talc and cellulose. The New Jersey medical examiner who autopsied Zadroga concluded the toxins destroyed his lungs. Dr. Michael Baden, a former city chief medical examiner who is now the state police forensic pathologist, reviewed and confirmed the autopsy findings."
Finally, it was reported, like the Bush Administration has parroted its' "intelligence" in order to "catapult the propaganda", and after "distancing" himself from the NY Medical Examiner's office, Mayor Michael Bloomberg parroted the findings of Charles Hirsch by saying said, “We wanted to have a hero, and there are plenty of heroes,” he said. “It’s just in this case, science says this was not a hero.”
I gotta tell ya. Some days, it's very hard to be non-violent. No, that DOES NOT mean I condone violence. Just trying to point out how angry this makes me.
Tired...
Tired...
Mayor To Meet With Detective Zadroga's Family
http://www.ny1.com/ny1/content/index...id=3&aid=75167
October 31, 2007
Mayor Michael Bloomberg will meet with the family of James Zadroga Monday, several days after taking heat for some comments he made about the detective.
The meeting is scheduled for Monday afternoon at City Hall.
Earlier this week, the mayor said former NYPD Detective James Zadroga, who worked on the September 11th recovery efforts at the World Trade Center site, wasn't a hero. But, he later called him a great officer and said he didn't mean to cast doubts on his reputation.
The mayor's comments prompted Zadroga's father to say Bloomberg was heartless and mean-spirited.
A New Jersey medical examiner ruled Zadroga'a death was directly related to the time he spent working at the WTC site. However, the city's M.E. said he contracted lung disease by injecting ground up pills into his system and not from breathing in toxins at the site.
Tired...
Parents of WTC cop to Mike: You're wrong, our son's a hero
http://www.nydailynews.com/news/2007...e_wrong_o.html
BY PATRICE O'SHAUGHNESSY
DAILY NEWS STAFF WRITER
Sunday, November 4th 2007, 10:37 AM
Joseph Zadroga considered the two stunning twists in the saga of his dead son and weighed which was the more painful.
Was it the meeting at the city morgue, where Chief Medical Examiner Charles Hirsch told the family in dry, scientific terms that James Zadroga, a decorated detective, died because he misused prescription drugs - not from inhaling toxic dust at Ground Zero?
Or was it Mayor Bloomberg publicly declaring that Hirsch's findings prove Zadroga, who became a worldwide symbol of the insidious health damage of 9/11, was not a hero?
"What Hirsch said really hurt. I knew it wasn't true," Joseph Zadroga said. "He disgraced my son's and my family's reputation, to say not just he was misusing drugs, but he was an intravenous drug user."
Then Zadroga shook his head and his eyes saddened.
"When Bloomberg said that, I said, 'I don't friggin' believe this.'"
All the Zadrogas have wanted for more than five years is for their son to be acknowledged as a 9/11 hero.
"It would be nice for his baby," said James' mother, Linda Zadroga, speaking of her orphaned granddaughter. "It would mean something for her."
The torment that has consumed the Zadroga family since their Jimmy took ill in 2002 did not end when he died last year. It was extended by the findings of two pathologists - that inhaled dust from Ground Zero killed him, and then by the shocking ruling by Hirsch.
Joseph Zadroga sat last week in the kitchen of the spacious gray shingled house in Little Egg Harbor on the Jersey Shore that the three generations of Zadrogas called home, his eyes scanning the panoramic view of Winding Creek and Great Bay, with Atlantic City rising in the distance.
He said he is absolutely positive there was no drug abuse.
"Jimmy had an intravenous line. I was giving him strong antibiotics through it," Zadroga said, pointing to crook of his elbow. "We doled out the other medication. He had short-term memory loss and would forget to take them, and we were afraid he would overdose.
"He had a pain-management doctor, he was getting eight tablets of OxyContin a day and 12 other medications."
A retired police chief of North Arlington, in Bergen County, Zadroga, 60, has a shaved head, gravelly voice and is powerfully built, as his son was.
He opened the 1,200-pound gray iron Liberty safe in a closet in his bedroom, where he keeps his guns and where he stored his son's medicines.
"He was on powerful stuff. We wanted to keep them from the baby," he explained.
Zadroga's eyes well up when he tells of caring for his son, who moved back with his parents in 2004 because he was sick and his wife had died suddenly. He had a toddler daughter to care for.
"He had two bags of antibiotics a day, it took 45 minutes for them to drip in," Zadroga said. "It became quality time for us. We sat and talked. Most of the rest of the time he'd be sleeping. I'm glad we had that time."
James Zadroga died at 34 on Jan. 5, 2006. His father found him on the floor. He had gotten up to get milk for his daughter - the cup was in his hand.
Dr. Gerard Breton, Ocean County medical examiner, did an autopsy and consulted with Armed Forces Institute of Pathology and Dr. Michael Baden, a renowned expert in forensic pathology.
The Armed Forces Institute said Zadroga's lungs had talc, cellulose, methacrylate and calcium phosphate, carbon and silica. Breton concluded Zadroga died of severe scarring of lung tissue and said the cause of death was directly related to 9/11.
It was the first link established between a Ground Zero worker's death and exposure to the dust there. James Zadroga became the face of post-9/11 illness, and Congress passed bills named for him to fund treatment for ailing Ground Zero workers.
Zadroga's family then asked Hirsch to review his death. They wanted his sacrifice documented by the city.
Hirsch studied slides of Zadroga's lung tissue. Hirsch also reviewed the military pathologist's report, but he didn't look at Zadroga's medical records, the detective's father said.
When the Zadrogas met two weeks ago with Hirsch, they brought along James Zadroga's young daughter Tyler-Ann. She sat in the room with her grandparents and watched as Joseph Zadroga propped a photo of her father, robust and slightly smiling in his blue NYPD uniform, on the table between them and Hirsch.
"Hirsch never looked at it," Joseph Zadroga recalled.
The longtime medical examiner told the family he had concluded James Zadroga had ground up his medication and injected the drugs into his bloodstream, leaving traces of the pills in his lung tissue.
The talc and cellulose found in the lung tissue are often binding agents in pills and capsules.
Linda Zadroga became so upset after Hirsch gave them the news that she bolted from the room. Her granddaughter followed.
"She saw how upset I was, and she was trying to comfort me," Linda Zadroga said.
In their grief, the family believes Hirsch's decision is part of a campaign to deny that their son's death is related to 9/11. They say the campaign included the feds or the city pressuring doctors and hospitals to deny their son care, and harassment from the NYPD, with police helicopters flying over their house.
"They don't want to open the floodgates" to all the others sickened at Ground Zero, Joseph Zadroga said.
Baden, the doctor who had consulted previously with the New Jersey medical examiner, disagrees with Hirsch's findings.
Baden said the materials in James Zadroga's lungs are found in concrete and wood. Baden noted he also saw large glass fibers, plastic and other materials that would have come from toxic dust. He said the material was primarily in the airways and concluded the particles were inhaled, not injected.
Joseph Zadroga has a 4-inch-thick blue binder of his son's medical records, letters to and from elected officials, doctors and lawyers. A biopsy photo of his son's lungs shows a black mass.
James Zadroga and his daughter lived on the second floor of the house, which has a remarkable fireplace fashioned like a sand castle, with two turreted towers forming the mantle.
Prominently displayed are a cross made from World Trade Center metal, a replica of Zadroga's gold detective shield, No. 6663, and photos of Tyler-Ann, who turned 6 Thursday. Zadroga's parents are raising the girl.
James Zadroga had surprised his father when he joined the NYPD. He was appointed in 1994, worked in Greenwich Village, Harlem, the Bronx, and in the street crime unit when it was an elite citywide unit. His last command was the Manhattan South homicide squad.
His police record aside from his 9/11 duty would be enough to deem him a hero cop: He amassed 187 arrests - 136 of them felonies - and earned 38 citations.
"He never told us about them," the father said.
Zadroga grew up in North Arlington, played football in high school, went to Bergen Community College and loved to hang out across the Hudson River. He later wrote about "the two towers that I grew up with when I looked out my back door."
He developed the "World Trade Center cough" soon after the attack on the skyscrapers. James Zadroga spent 400 hours at the rubble, according to the NYPD.
It's going on two years, but Linda Zadroga hasn't cleaned out her son's room.
"I can't go up there," she said. "I made it to the landing, and I came back down the stairs."
Like many parents of cops and firefighters killed on 9/11, the Zadrogas wear symbols of their pain and loss.
The mother wears a silver heart with a photo of her dead son and the words "Jimmy 9/11 Hero." Her husband has a large tattoo on his forearm of the Ground Zero cross and his son's shield.
"Everyone praises the dead as heroes as they should, but there are more living suffering than dead," James Zadroga himself wrote a year after 9/11, when illness gripped him.
Since declaring Zadroga was not a hero, Bloomberg has tempered his remarks, calling the detective a dedicated cop. But it did not assuage the outrage from the family and the city detectives union, so Bloomberg has invited the Zadrogas to City Hall tomorrow.
"I've been asking to meet with him since '02," said Joseph Zadroga. "I hope he publicly apologizes."
Tired...
Bloomberg Sorry for 'Not a Hero' Remark
http://ap.google.com/article/ALeqM5g...uYMzgD8SNODOG0
12 minutes ago
NEW YORK (AP) — A week after saying a ground zero worker was "not a hero" because drugs were found to have caused his death, Mayor Michael Bloomberg apologized to the man's father Monday.
After meeting with the mayor at City Hall, Joseph Zadroga said Bloomberg also told him he was going to try to find a way for the Sept. 11 victims memorial to include those who have been sickened by the toxic ground zero dust and debris.
Bloomberg drew outrage with his reaction to Chief Medical Examiner Charles Hirsch's recent conclusion that Zadroga's son, James, contracted a fatal lung disease not from the World Trade Center dust he inhaled for weeks, but by injecting himself with ground-up pills.
"We wanted to have a hero," Bloomberg said Oct. 29. "There are plenty of heroes. It's just that in this case, the science says this was not a hero."
The family of James Zadroga, a retired police detective, rejects allegations that the 34-year-old took any medications improperly. At least two other medical experts have concluded that the material found in his respiratory system included microscopic shards of debris from the terrorist attacks on Sept. 11, 2001.
The mayor backpedaled after saying Zadroga was not a hero, calling him "a great NYPD officer" who had repeatedly risked his life for the city and had gotten sick from breathing contaminated air at ground zero. He said, however, that it would be up to the public to decide whether Zadroga was a hero.
Hirsch's ruling meant the police detective would not be included on the official list of victims and his name would not be etched on the memorial wall. So far, only one person who survived the towers' collapse but died later of health problems has been added to the official death toll.
Tired...
Mayor sorry for calling Ground Zero cop 'not a hero'
http://www.newsday.com/news/local/ne...,7946098.story
BY KARLA SCHUSTER | karla.schuster@newsday.com
3:48 PM EST, November 5, 2007
A week after he said a police detective who died after working at Ground Zero was "not a hero", Mayor Michael Bloomberg apologized to man's father on Monday, and promised that the city will find a way to memorialize rescue and recovery workers who died after being exposed to dust while working at the former World Trade Center site.
"The mayor apologized for his statement, the mayor was very gracious, he showed sympathy for James, he said James was a true hero, that he was just misquoted or taken out of context when he said what he said," said Joe Zadroga, father of detective James Zadroga, after a 35-minute meeting with Bloomberg Monday afternoon at City Hall.
Zadroga also said that the mayor, who heads the board of the National Sept. 11 Museum and Memorial at the World Trade Center, vowed to figure out a way to include those who worked at Ground Zero after the Sept. 11 attacks and were exposed to and sickened by toxic dust. "He understands that the people that are passing away after, such as Jimmy, and that he will go back to the (World Trade committee and figure out some way, that somehow they will come up with a way of recognizing these people that are passing away from their illnesses from the World Trade Center."
Det. James Zadroga, 34, who worked hundreds of hours at Ground Zero after the terrorist attacks, became a symbol of post-Sept. 11 illness after his death last year. The meeting came after the mayor, speaking in Boston last week, said that Zadroga was not a hero, referring to a ruling by the city's chief medical examiner, Dr. Charles Hirsch, that the detective's death was not a result of exposure to toxic trade center dust. Instead, Hirsch said that Zadroga's fatal lung disease resulted from Zadroga injecting himself with ground-up pills.
The conclusion contradicted a previous pathologist's report that said Zadroga's death was the result of his work after the 2001 terrorist attacks.
"We wanted to have a hero. There are plenty of heroes. It's just that in this case, the science says this was not a hero," Bloomberg said last Monday. But at yesterday's meeting, the mayor had a different take, according to Michael Barash, the Zadrogas' attorney.
"The mayor said 'you know - it mayor told them that it seems clear that his illness and disability were caused by World Trade Center exposure,' " Barash said. "The mayor seemed open-minded to us...We appreciate the fact that he's willing to have this looked at again by Dr. Hirsch and we're hoping we can win the battle. Who says you can't fight City Hall?"
Tired...
Mayor Bloomberg apologizes to WTC cop's family
http://www.nydailynews.com/news/2007...tc_cops_f.html
DAILY NEWS STAFF
Monday, November 5th 2007, 3:00 PM
Mayor Michael Bloomberg has apologized for saying that a police detective who died after working at Ground Zero "was not a hero," the cop's dad said Monday.
James Zadroga, 34, died in January of a lung disease. Chief Medical Examiner Charles Hirsch recently concluded his illness was not caused by dust from the World Trade Center site, but rather by injecting himself with ground-up pills.
The ruling meant the police detective would not be included on the official list of victims and his name would not be etched on the 9/11 memorial wall.
Zadroga's father, Joseph, met Monday with the mayor at City Hall. The father said Bloomberg apologized for saying the ruling meant his son was "not a hero" and said he would try to find a way for the Sept. 11 victims memorial to include those who have been sickened by the toxic debris at Ground Zero.
Didn't I read that the ME was going to meet with this family?
Tired...
9/11 responder laid to rest in Hauppauge
http://www.news12.com/LI/topstories/article?id=202753
(11/09/07) HAUPPAUGE - A New York City police sergeant who worked at ground zero was laid to rest in Hauppauge Friday after losing an 18-month battle with cancer.
Michael Ryan, of Hauppauge, was 41 years old when he passed away Monday. He was 39 when doctors diagnosed him with three different aggressive types of cancer.
Ryan spent hours working at ground zero and a Staten Island landfill after the Sept. 11 attacks. During that time, he inhaled dangerous toxins many believe directly caused hundreds of emergency workers to develop cancer and other ailments.
Ed Mullins, of the NYPD Sergeants Benevolent Association, said he will continue to fight for health care for the group that considers itself forgotten by the city it served. Ryan's funeral, held at Saint Thomas More Church in Hauppauge, was not conducted as an "in the line of duty" death, which Mullins said makes all the difference.
"There's a significant difference between this becoming a line-of-duty death and a non-line-of-duty death, as far as pensions go and benefits go," Mullins said. "The truth of it is he was a 39-year-old healthy individual involved in athletics, and two years later, at the age of 41, he's dead and it doesn't make sense."
Ryan, a 20-year police veteran, leaves behind his wife and four young children.
Neither New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg nor Police Commissioner Ray Kelly were in attendance for the funeral.
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