Ronald Muschong will become a real-life Chief Ironside when he is sworn in May 1 as Warren`s first police chief confined to a wheelchair.
”My whole life`s been a challenge,” he said after his appointment to the post this week by Mayor James Randlett. ”This is really a dream come true. It`s always been a dream for me as a police officer to reach the top of my department.”
Muschong, 44, a 22-year veteran of the department, broke his spine in a 1972 trail-biking accident, which left his legs paralyzed.
He called his promotion to the $42,588-a-year job ”extra special”
because he has always believed ”people should be hired for their abilities, not their disabilities.”
”Unless you have lived through it, no one knows what it`s like to be walking one day and not the next,” he said. ”I don`t see my handicap as a detriment to my ability to do the job.”
Muschong, a detective corporal, will replace Police Chief Max Durbin, who resigned after 14 months because of job stress.
Randlett, himself a former Warren police officer, said he chose Muschong after interviewing nine candidates from Warren`s 270-member department and from other communities in the Detroit area.
”Muschong came out on top in all the areas we were looking at,”
Randlett said.
Inevitably, some of Muschong`s officers already are calling him Chief Ironside, after the character played by Raymond Burr in the television series about a detective in a wheelchair. Muschong said he doesn`t mind.
”Hey, I figure Raymond Burr did it (on television),” he said. ”I can do it today, in real life.”
