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KING: A Former Marine Was Fired As A W.Va. Police Officer After Failing To Shoot Somebody

Shaun King

On July 24, 2015, the Weirton, W.Va., Police Department announced the hir­ing of three new offi­cers for the force. All three men were cel­e­brat­ed for bring­ing some much need­ed youth to an aging depart­ment in the sleepy rur­al city 35 miles out­side of Pittsburgh. Zach Springer was just 20. Adam Mortimer was 21. And the old head among them was Stephen Mader, who was 24.

Maybe they knew it. Maybe they did­n’t. But Stephen Mader was a find, a gem, a bless­ing for that lit­tle depart­ment. Even though he was just 24 when they hired him, Stephen Mader was already a bonafide hero — one of the good guys. Mader had spent four years in the Marines. In the announce­ment that he was hired by the Weirton Police Department, I noticed that it said Mader was a Marine. I took a chance and Googled “Stephen Mader Marines” and imme­di­ate­ly found sev­er­al sto­ries of a Marine named Stephen Mader who served in Helmand Province in Afghanistan. A spe­cial report was done on him and his amaz­ing explo­sive-sniff­ing dog, Maxx. This Stephen Mader joined the Marines in 2009 and became an impro­vised explo­sive device dog han­dler with the 3rd Battalion, 8th Marines, Regimental Combat Team 6.

I could­n’t ver­i­fy for sure if it was the same man. It def­i­nite­ly looked like him. Then I searched his name on Facebook and there he was — Stephen Mader from Weirton, West Virginia, a Marine, with his trust­ed dog Maxx. It was him — except now, Mader is no longer a police offi­cer. He got fired. While his hir­ing made the local news there in Weirton, his ter­mi­na­tion has gone nation­al. Bad police offi­cers are known for keep­ing their jobs in spite of bru­tal­i­ty, cor­rup­tion, harass­ment and even mur­der. The Chicago Police Department has hun­dreds of offi­cers with 20 or more bru­tal­i­ty com­plaints. Daniel Pantaleo, the NYPD offi­cer who used a dead­ly choke­hold on Eric Garner, not only avoid­ed pros­e­cu­tion, but has kept job and received bonus­es over the past two years. He’s some­how bring­ing in a salary two to three times the aver­age school­teacher in spite of his actions in Garner’s death, as well as cost­ing New York City in sev­er­al oth­er law­suits before that.

It’s a rare thing to see a police offi­cer get fired. When it hap­pens, it’s nor­mal­ly for two rea­sons — they’ve com­mit­ted a crime that they will like­ly be found guilty of or they are buck­ing the sys­tem some­how and have seri­ous­ly pissed off their boss­es. Read more here :http://www.nydailynews.com/news/national/king-ex-marine-fired-w-va-officer-failing-shoot-article‑1.2790284