Police in Chicago, Seattle, LA oppose vaccine mandates for public employees : NPR

Chicago police officers salute the flag of the city on August 18. Charles Rex Arbogast / AP Hide caption

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Charles Rex Arbogast / AP

Chicago police officers salute the flag of the city on August 18.

Charles Rex Arbogast / AP

Monday was the last day of work for hundreds of officials in Washington state, where a new vaccination mandate for civil servants went into effect this week. This includes a sergeant from the Washington State Patrol who told KUOW he had made an appointment to drop off his patrol car and equipment.

In the Los Angeles district, Sheriff Alex Villanueva announced earlier this month that he would not carry out the district’s mandate for his department’s 18,000 employees, warning that the most populous district in the country “could lose 5.10% of my workforce overnight.” .

And in Chicago, the dispute between police and city officials over the city’s vaccination mandate is so controversial that a judge ordered the local union president not to make public statements after the city’s attorney accused him of “community riot and high treason.”

As vaccination rules for officials go into effect across the country, police officers and the unions they represent are struggling and frustrating officials who say their goal is to minimize the number of deaths in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic.

“More police officers die from COVID than from any other cause of death, so there is no point in not trying to protect yourself and the colleagues you work with,” said Dr. Anthony Fauci, the nation’s top infectious disease officer, said in an interview on Fox News Sunday.

More than 230 police officers in the US have died of COVID-19 so far in 2021, more than four times the number of gunshot deaths, according to the Officer Down Memorial Page, a group tracking deaths of police officers on duty. Last year, the coronavirus killed nearly 250 officials nationwide, including four in Chicago.

“I want to make sure that our officials, who are literally working their way off their tail every day and risking life and limb, can absolutely take advantage of this life-saving vaccine,” Chicago Mayor Lori Lightfoot said at a news conference on Monday.

As of Monday, 79% of all city employees had followed Lightfoot’s instructions to show their vaccination status, officials said. But about a third of the Chicago Police Department’s employees – more than 4,500 in all, including sworn officers and civilian employees – turned it down.

The city’s fraternal police order, led by its President John Catanzara, had repeatedly encouraged officials not to comply with the city’s requirement that all city workers share their vaccination status by midnight last Friday. That led to his admonition by a judge on Friday.

Workers who do not report their status, including police officers, will not be paid, the mayor said on Monday. According to WBEZ, an internal memo sent over the weekend warned department staff that if they fail to adhere to the policy, they could be fired.

More than 20 states have implemented some sort of mandate to vaccinate government employees, and many large communities have implemented it as.

Vaccination regulations are effective in getting people vaccinated, which in turn reduces serious illness and death from COVID-19. Big companies like United Airlines and Tyson Foods have announced mandates and have since reported that the vast majority of their employees are vaccinated. In Washington, Governor Jay Inslee said last week that more than 90% of state employees have been vaccinated.

But police officers have consistently opposed the vaccine more often than the general public. Combined with rising crime – violent crime increased by around 5% overall and killings by nearly 30% in 2020 – police unions have begun to raise concerns that tight enforcement of mandates could lead to staff shortages.

In Seattle, detectives and other non-patrolling officers were dispatched to emergency calls last week, according to local television station KOMO.

In Massachusetts, where Governor Charlie Baker’s vaccination mandate went into effect on Monday, at least 150 state police officers have resigned or filed, according to the union, despite the state not yet confirming those numbers. Roughly 85% of state police officers are vaccinated, but union officials say the layoffs are making an already difficult workforce worse.

“Critically tight staffing levels are the greatest threat to public safety today,” said Michael Cherven, president of the State Police Association of Massachusetts, at a news conference Monday. “We urgently need courageous leadership that puts public safety above politics.”

Opponents have filed lawsuits across the country hoping to block vaccine mandates, but there has been a long history of past legal patterns.

Many of the lawsuits have already been dismissed by judges, including the Supreme Court’s denial of urgent motions from teachers in New York City and college students in Indiana.