Disabled Cape deputy sheriff's stuntman work raises eyebrows

     Like I have said, you can freeze government worker's pay but you need some waste management and some pension reform to boot.... As far as extending the unemployment checks for one year, what happens then?

During the climax of "Furry Vengeance," a feature-length film released earlier this year staring Brendan Fraser and Brooke Shields, three men dressed in suits leap over a 3-foot-high wall as computer-generated animals go on a rampage.

One of the men then pops his head through a "Whac-A-Mole"-like game only to have a white critter bop him with a black, spongy mallet sending him cross-eyed back into the hole.

The actor, listed as a stunt performer in the film's credits, is Richard F. Bonavita Jr., a former Barnstable County Sheriff's Office assistant superintendent of jail operations who is collecting a $67,000 annual disability pension for an on-the-job arm injury.

"Right off the bat, I would say it doesn't sound right," Bonavita's former boss, Barnstable County Sheriff James Cummings, said after being told about the film.

The state would terminate disability payments to any retired public employee capable of doing work that is physically more demanding than his or her former job, said Frank Valeri, deputy director for the state Public Employee Retirement Administration Commission.

During an interview Thursday at his West Barnstable home, Bonavita said he performed the stunt but said it did not endanger him.

      Probably just a fluke......