A shotgun blast fired from inside a car at Schramm Park sent Russ Zeeb scrambling for cover — and pondering his family's future.
"At that time I thought about two things, and that's my grandchildren, my daughter, my wife, and how they were going to survive without me," the retired Sarpy County sheriff's deputy said Monday, recounting a 2011 incident he escaped without harm.
"When that blast took off, it makes you think and it makes you wonder."
Zeeb, now president of the committee that oversees the Nebraska Law Enforcement Memorial in Grand Island, supports a measure by state Sen. Heath Mello of Omaha to provide a $50,000 death benefit for families of law enforcement officers, firefighters and corrections officers who die on duty.
"It's the state's recognition that this is very dangerous work," Mello said of his proposal.
People are also reading…
Nebraska has had at least eight line-of-duty deaths in the past 16 years, Mello told members of the Legislature's Business and Labor Committee during a public hearing Monday at the Capitol. Some groups believe the actual number is at least twice that high, but the state has no centralized record.
Associations representing thousands of public safety officers across the state turned out for Monday's hearing to support Mello's bill ().
No one testified in opposition, but some committee members asked pointed questions about whether it is necessary.
Omaha Sen. Ernie Chambers, who has long been critical of police, said cops already willingly take on whatever risks their positions involve.
"They're paid and they wanted the job," he said. "Where is the state's duty in regards to this?"
Public safety officers' families are already eligible for nearly $340,000 in death or serious disability benefits from the federal government. Many state and local agencies also include death benefits such as life insurance in their compensation packages.Â
Yet all neighboring states also offer death benefits similar to those proposed for Nebraska, Mello said.
That could make the difference in recruiting new officers, particularly in smaller departments that can't offer extensive benefits packages, said Jason Cvitanov, president of the Bellevue police union and secretary of the Nebraska Fraternal Order of Police.
Others questioned why police officers' deaths should be treated any differently than other workplace deaths.
State Sen. Dave Bloomfield of Hoskins, a retired truck driver, said the grieving process is the same.Â
"I've been through it many times, and I'm unfortunately familiar with it," he said.
Nebraska averages about 36 workplace deaths each year, said Rod Rehm, a personal injury lawyer from Lincoln.
Take steel workers, he said: "I've had those guys fall off roofs and die and get crushed. They're doing a hell of a community service. So are road workers. So are the packing plant workers who get chewed up and spit out like the hamburger they're making."