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Guard and Reserve Night
Hello, my fraternal brothers and sisters. On May 21, your Military Committee held a Guard and Reserve night at the Chicago Police Department Training Academy. We had representatives from the Veterans Administration (VA) Regional Office and the Jesse Brown Veterans Hospi-
tal, who were on hand to provide informa-
tion on VA medical benefits. We also had a representative from the Chicago Fire De- partment union, as they are having similar
concerns.
Our primary goal was to obtain information from our fel-
low officers on how they have been treated when performing military duty. What we discovered is that after nearly 17 years of war, the Chicago Police Department is still having issues when our sisters and brothers are performing military duty and when they return.
Despite having federal, state and municipal statues and ordi- nances, we learned that our brothers and sisters while deployed and on a CPD military leave of absence have issues with pay, insurance and even returning to work. For example, we had an officer who was returning from a military leave of absence of more than four months. The officer went to CPD Human Re- sources (HR) with a Department of Defense Form 214 (Record of Discharge) that ended on Friday. The officer should have been reinstated with a return to duty date on Saturday. The HR employee refused to reinstate the officer since his discharge had not yet ended, despite the fact that there are no HR em- ployees working on the weekends. So, the officer returned on
Monday ready and eager to return to duty, only to be told that HR was too busy to reinstate the officer. Once again, the officer was told to return the next day, which was Tuesday. The officer had now missed three days of pay through no fault of his own.
JERRY CRUZ
R
MILITARY
After some firm conversations, and with the assistance of Alderman Ariel E. Rebroyas (Chair, Public Safety Com- mittee), the officer was reinstated the day after his dis- charge. A good ending for the officer but, sadly, we have y other officers with insurance, pay and medical issues
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have an unlimited time to use your Post-9/11 GI Bill. The 15- year time limit to use the benefit has been eliminated. Unfor- tunately, if you were discharged prior to Jan. 1, 2013, the time limit is still in effect.
Flag Day is June 14, on which we celebrate the adoption of the American flag by the First Continental Congress, which passed the First Flag Act on June 14, 1777. The Act declared that the new flag would have “13 stripes alternate red and white: that the union be thirteen stars, white in a blue field, representing a new constellation.”
On May 28, 1945 President Truman stated “Our flag has ac- companied our fighting men on a hundred battlefields. It flies beyond the seas over the friendly lands our arms have freed, and over the hostile countries our arms have conquered. Our flag will be planted in the heart of the empire of our last remaining enemy.” I’ll be proudly flying Old Glory in front of my home. d
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stemming from their deployments or mobilizations that need addressing, and your committee will assist
these officers.
Veterans, if you were discharged after Jan. 1, 2013, you now
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