An NYPD officer and Marine veteran has teamed up with Senator Eric Adams in a fight to get him off desk duty and back on the streets. Officer James Brower, who served three tours in Iraq and Afghanistan, has been a cop since 2004, but has been on desk duty since 2005 after he told a supervisor that he was experiencing combat flashbacks. He was declared fit for full duty in 2008 by the Medical Board of the Police Pension Fund. "I feel betrayed," Brower told the Daily News.
Senator Eric Adams, chair of the Veterans, Homeland Security, and Military Affairs committee, called the NYPD's techniques to keep Brower on desk duty "underhanded." He said in a statement, "Despite these [clean] evaluations, the NYPD has kept him on restricted duty, and now, the department is using his ADD diagnosis from when he was 9-years old as a reason to decertify him through the Department of Citywide Administrative Services, claiming he didn’t disclose the information...I am calling attention to this matter- and the use of an elementary school diagnosis as a reason to decertify an otherwise qualified and honorable officer."
Police sources say this has nothing to do with what he told his supervisor. "He actually lied on his [NYPD] application. It's not about him saying anything to another cop." Brower and Adams will appear at a hearing with the Department of Citywide Administrative Services tomorrow to argue that the NYPD should be taking advantage of Brower's counter-terror experience.
