Three long-time Philadelphia police officers contracted terminal brain cancer after spending years working at a converted pre-Civil War military facility, according to a lawsuit.
The families of officers Joe Cooney, Michael Deal and Andrew Schafer filed a civil complaint last December against a group of developers and public entities over the historic Frankford Arsenal in Philadelphia, claiming the site was never properly cleared of known carcinogens, KYW Newsradio reported Monday. Cooney passed away just last month.
All three men spent years working at the former military facility after it was converted into the Philadelphia Police Department’s Narcotics Unit headquarters.
Bill Davis, an attorney representing the families, told KYW Newsradio that multiple studies conducted over the years on the site revealed persistent contamination. Davis added that the Army Corps of Engineers, which oversees disused military sites, repeatedly found toxic materials during periodic reviews after Frankford was decommissioned.
“Not enough was done at the site to make it safe for people who are working there, like these narcotics officers,” he said.
The Frankford Arsenal manufactured ammunition and military equipment from before the Civil War until its closure 1977. The police department’s narcotics division moved into the complex in the 1980s.
According to Davis, the manufacturing history left behind a legacy of lead, radium and other highly toxic substances that were never fully remediated. Radium was heavily used at the site decades ago to paint glowing military watch faces and equipment.
The lawsuit alleges that the concentration of glioblastoma, an aggressive form of brain cancer, among the officers far exceeds normal statistical expectations.
Davis told KYW that the number of cases of this very rare cancer was much higher than what would be expected in the general population, and that nothing had been done to warn the officers that the danger was there.
The three officers named in the suit each had extensive careers with the department.
Andrew Schafer served as a police officer for more than two decades, spending 13 years at the arsenal between 2002 and 2015. He died last year at the age of 51 following a brain cancer diagnosis in 2023.
Michael Deal joined the force in 1980 and moved to the narcotics unit in 1994. He was diagnosed with glioblastoma in 2018 and died the following year aged 64.
Joe Cooney became a police officer in 1995, joined the narcotics division in 1998 and died last month at age 54 after being diagnosed in 2024.
Diana Schafer, a nurse and the widow of Andrew Schafer, recalled the early warning signs of her husband’s illness.
“He’d have, like, two focal seizures, just straight out stare while he was cooking,” she told the outlet. “He was just a stubborn cop and just went on. I said, ‘You need to go to the ER.’” A visit confirmed the diagnosis.
The Independent has contacted the Philadelphia Police Department, the City of Philadelphia Law Department, Hankin Management Company and Philadelphia Authority for Industrial Development Corporation for comment.
