The Mayor has some nerve determining who was and wasn't a hero on the pile at Ground Zero. During September 11th he was far from the death and destruction that was wrought down in the Financial District. The man isolated by his money tries to be like one of the people by riding the subway (after being driven to the express stop by his police detail) but in reality he is no hero, just a rich media tycoon that was anointed by Rudy Giuliani right after the attacks.
For him to call a man who spent 450 hours working and trying to rescue people in the smoking inferno nothing more than a drug addict is nothing short of atrocious. Bloomberg made those comments while accepting an award at Harvard, well Detective James Zadroga didn't have a chance to make it up to Cambridge, he died from scarred lungs as have many other workers on the pile.
From The Daily News:
"Our chief medical examiner believes that the deceased was using some of his drugs in a manner for recreational drugs," Bloomberg said.
Bloomberg said that instead of taking his medications orally, Zadroga "was injecting them into his veins - a common practice, I gather."
"Nobody wanted to hear that," Bloomberg said. "We wanted to have a hero. There are plenty of heroes. It's just in this case, the science says this was not a hero."
Zadroga's father was shocked.
"For Bloomberg to say that he's not a hero, that is a disgrace," Joseph Zadroga said. "Why is he trying to malign my son and deny that Jimmy is a hero."
Bloomberg made those shocking comments based on a second autopsy done on Zadroga. Before the family wanted their son's name added to the official list of 9/11 victims the autopsy showed he had in fact succumbed to the toxic air of Lower Manhattan.
Only after there was something at stake for the city did the results change. Michael Palladino, president of the Detectives' Endowment Association is now accusing the Chief Medical Examiner that his results were politically motivated. Serious charges for a serious case of degrading treatment of a hero by a callous and insensitive Mayor.
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