For Immediate Release:
Reality or Fake, Police Disability Pays!
On television, Joseph Derrico pursues a monster truck on foot, pulls the driver out of the vehicle and tosses him to the ground. He is on truTV's "Bear Swamp Recovery," a reality show on vehicle repos by the "baddest towing team in Jersey."
Yet Derrico collects a police disability pension of nearly $70,000 a year. In the eyes of the State of New Jersey, the retired Hamilton Township cop is "totally and permanently disabled" by a leg injury.
No stranger to trouble, Derrico was a criminal defendant when he retired in 2010. A Mercer County grand jury indicted Derrico on a felony charge of theft by receiving stolen property.
The patrolman escaped with his pension intact – thanks to a secretive deal with Mercer County Prosecutor Joseph Bocchini, who dropped the case when Derrico retired
If convicted, Derrico could have lost his pension. Instead, he has collected $180,000 in tax-free disability pay from the state Police and Firemen's Retirement System. If he reaches his life expectancy of age 80, Derrico's bad leg and behavior will be good for $2.5 million.
Bocchini claims his office has no record of the indictment or dismissal of charges against Derrico. In response, New Jersey Watchdog is suing the prosecutor in Mercer County Superior Court to produce the records or an explanation of why they no longer exist.
The Derrico case illustrates the inherent weaknesses of a $200 million a year disability pension system that's prone to abuse by police and firefighters in New Jersey.
Check out the full story – a joint investigation by New Jersey Watchdog (http://newjersey.watchdog.org) and NBC 4 New York – at http://newjersey.watchdog.org/2013/04/28/fake-or-reality/.
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