Got Bilk?
Police disability guidelines in Montgomery County, Maryland have been changed so cop with a hangnail doesn't get the same disability pay as a cop with full-body paralysis. From the WaPo editorial page:

For years many officers routinely claimed full disability at retirement, a straight-up scam that bilked county taxpayers of millions of dollars. Finally, after overcoming ferocious opposition to any change from the union that represents officers, the county settled on a legislative fix that took effect in 2012 -- and even then the union continued to fight the change.

Fortunately, the county council stuck to its guns, and now the results are clear, as is the scale of the abuse that was taking place in the police department. On a force where full disability was once a routine method of retiring at nearly full pay, there has been a sea change.

To recap: Over the five years that ended in 2009, 91 officers in Montgomery were awarded disability pensions, which are tax free. That amounted to more than 60 percent of all retirees from the police force. By comparison, just three officers in Fairfax County received such a benefit over the same span.

...The root of the problem was that the department did not have -- and the police union would not accept -- a common-sense distinction between serious and minor impairments. Officers who suffered nothing more than sore backs and knees -- the usual problems -- were treated no differently than the very rare officer paralyzed from the waist down. And it was not uncommon for youngish officers with relatively minor disabilities to retire with full benefits and take full-time jobs elsewhere -- sometimes physically demanding ones.

How many police officers could have been kept on the street with the money the union de facto stole from the public?

via @walterolson