By Sophia Chang
Newsday
Copyright 2007 Newsday
NEW YORK — The father of New York City Det. James Zadroga said his “heart broke” when he learned Mayor Michael Bloomberg publicly said his son, a Ground Zero first responder who died of pulmonary disease, was “not a hero” and abused drugs.
Now the Zadrogas want an official apology from the mayor and a chance to tell him in person about their son’s slow and painful death.
“I would like to meet with the mayor and tell him of Jimmy’s condition,” said Joseph Zadroga, a retired police officer, at a news conference yesterday at his attorney’s office in Manhattan. “To have the mayor come out and make such an outrageous statement that he was an intravenous drug user, it’s just heartbreaking, and my wife and my family just could not get over it.”
Zadroga, 34, was a decorated detective who worked more than 400 hours at Ground Zero, and died in January 2006 at his parents’ home in Little Egg Harbor, N.J., after his lungs deteriorated.
During an awards ceremony at Harvard University’s School of Public Health on Monday, Bloomberg said of Zadroga, “We wanted to have a hero. ... It’s just in this case, science says this was not a hero.”
But the mayor backtracked when questioned by reporters yesterday and called Zadroga “a dedicated police officer.”
“If you look at his record, it’s quite impressive and he certainly volunteered to work downtown. ... I think the odds are he clearly got sick because of breathing the air, but that’s up to the doctors,” Bloomberg said. “I certainly didn’t mean to hurt the family or impugn his reputation.”
After a New Jersey pathologist and an independent forensic pathologist requested by the Zadroga family both determined that his fatal pulmonary disease was a result of breathing the toxic air at the World Trade Center site, Zadroga’s death became a touchstone for politicians and rescue workers seeking treatment for ailing first responders. The Zadrogas asked the city’s chief medical examiner, Dr. Charles Hirsch, to review his autopsy records so their son’s name could be added to the list of the dead on the 9/11 memorial.
But last week the family revealed that Hirsch concluded that the particles found in Zadroga’s lungs came from ground-up pills injected intravenously. The family is still battling Hirsch’s findings and has requested that he examine more of Zadroga’s medical records and evidence.
“I just feel there’s a political air,” to Bloomberg’s recent remarks, said Detectives’ Endowment Association president Michael Palladino at the news conference yesterday. The city is facing a class-action lawsuit brought by workers at the World Trade Center site, but Bloomberg has also asked the federal government for additional funding for first-responder aid and monitoring.
Stu Loeser, a spokesman for Bloomberg, said the mayor would be happy to meet with the Zadrogas, although as of yesterday evening Bloomberg had not yet issued an apology or an invitation.
“It would be nice if he actually reaches out,” said Michael Barasch, the Zadroga family’s attorney. “It’s so easy to kill a man’s reputation with a few chosen words. I don’t know if Mayor Bloomberg can do anything to fix the damage he’s done to this hero cop’s reputation.”
Staff writer Karla Schuster contributed to this report.