New York officials stand guard as people gather at City Hall to protest mandatory vaccinations. Photo: Michael M. Santiago / Getty.
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COVID-19 has killed more United States police officers than anything else in 2021. More than 157 officers have died from the virus so far this year, according to the Fallen Officers Memorial Page, while one report the National Memorial Fund for Police Officers found the disease to be the “leading cause of law enforcement deaths” in 2021.
The highly contagious delta variant of the coronavirus is causing an increase in infections and deaths nationwide, but significant numbers of police are refusing to get vaccinated. Over the weekend, six Los Angeles Police Department (LAPD) employees filed a lawsuit against the city for their mandatory vaccination, claiming it has created a “hostile work environment” in the department.
An LAPD spokesperson declined to comment on the litigation. But, in a video statement, Los Angeles City Attorney Mike Feuer said he was confident the city would prevail.
“I have enormous respect for our emergency personnel and for all city employees,” he said. “But in this pandemic it cannot be the case that the health of someone’s child, someone’s grandmother, or anyone in our city, is put at risk because they had contact with emergency personnel who have not been vaccinated. and it could transmit covid-19 ”, he added.
But the lawsuit signals a larger trend among police officers and unions across the country who oppose mandatory vaccinations. Last week, President Joe Biden announced wide-ranging vaccination requirements affecting up to 100 million Americans, in an attempt to increase the vaccination rate nationwide.
In his comments, the president harshly criticized the millions of Americans who have not yet been vaccinated.
Public health experts agree that the high numbers of police officers who remain unvaccinated will only prolong the pandemic. The officers are “too much in the public eye,” he told Newsweek Dr. Robert Murphy, executive director of the Institute for Global Health at Northwestern University Feinberg School of Medicine.
“They often cannot wear masks and cannot keep a healthy distance. They are a very high risk mobile group that interacts with multiple communities ”.
Unvaccinated officers “put themselves at risk, put their families at risk, their colleagues at risk, and put the community at risk,” he added.
Dr. Robert Kim-Farley, an epidemiologist and infectious disease expert at the Fielding School of Public Health at the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA), noted that mandatory vaccinations would not be necessary if enough people were inoculated, especially when the delta variant increases the cases.
“If there was a voluntary acceptance and recognition of the value of vaccination, it would not be required to be mandatory, because more than 95% of the people who have attended have been vaccinated voluntarily,” he told Newsweek.
But police unions argue that enforcement is an affront to officers’ civil liberties, and the decision to get vaccinated should be a personal matter.
Union will take any action
Larry Cosme, president of the Federal Association of Police Officers, criticized Biden’s mandate for federal employees as “wrong.” “This presidential decree alienates employees for their reasonable concerns and doubts, and inserts the federal government into individual medical decisions,” he said.
“People should not be made to feel uncomfortable making a reasonable medical decision. We will continue to review the legal landscape regarding this decree, and we will act as appropriate to support our members and voice their concerns, ”he added.
The Fraternal Order of Police, a national union representing more than 350,000 officers, also does not support mandatory vaccinations, even though its own figures estimate that 644 police officers have died from COVID-19 since the pandemic began.
When Newsweek Asked the union’s position, a spokesperson pointed to a recent statement, which said that “vaccines work to prevent people from getting infected or transmitting COVID-19.” However, he adds that the union “will take any action and use whatever approach is available to protect our members and their rights” against being binding.
“Whether or not they accept the vaccine, it is a personal decision that our members should make for themselves after consulting with their doctor or other medical professionals,” he added.
But even before Biden’s announcement, police unions across the country were ranting against mandatory local vaccinations, despite their much lower vaccination rates than among the general public and the increase in the number of COVID-19 deaths among theirs.
New Jersey police unions continue to oppose local mandatory vaccinations despite 22 officers dying from the virus in the state last week.
At the LAPD, about half of the department’s 12,000 employees remain unvaccinated, prompting the department to release a video featuring the widows of LAPD employees killed by COVID-19, urging them to receive their doses.
Previously this month, Los Angeles Times reported that 85% of LAPD employees infected with COVID-19 since June were not vaccinated.
Vaccination rates are similarly low in the New York Police Department. (NYPD). Only 53% of NYPD employees have received a dose of the vaccine, compared to 79% of adults citywide, according to Gothamist.
Kim-Farley notes that low adoption among law enforcement officers is surprising. “It is still a kind of mystery in my mind why there is resistance in a group of people that you would think would be among the first to agree to be vaccinated to protect themselves and others,” he told Newsweek.
“Actually, the police, ideally, should be at the forefront of accepting vaccines as an example for their communities,” added Kim-Farley.
Is it a good idea to withhold wages?
Low adoption among officers led New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio to say the city would withhold the wages of NYPD employees who refuse to be vaccinated or tested weekly, a directive that all four City police unions have allegedly promised to challenge in court.
Meanwhile, the city’s largest police union has been outspoken in its criticism of enforcement, with its president threatening to sue if his officers are forced to get vaccinated.
“If the city tries to impose a mandatory vaccination on members of the Police Benevolent Association (PBA), we will take legal action to defend the right of our members to make such personal medical decisions,” said Patrick Lynch, president of the PBA, a New York Post last month.
In Chicago, the city’s largest police union, the Fraternal Order of Police, also vowed to take legal action after Mayor Lori Lightfoot said there would be mandatory vaccinations for city employees.
“It cannot be mandatory. It’s that easy. Our members don’t want to be forced to do something like that, ”commented union president John Catanzara. Later, he even came to compare mandatory vaccinations with the Holocaust. “We are in the United States, damn it. We don’t want to be forced to do anything. Point. This is not the f ** king Nazi Germany, where they tell you, ‘Get in the f ** king showers. The pills won’t hurt you, ‘”he said.
Such strong resistance to enforcement appears to have worked in Portland, Oregon. Portland Mayor Ted Wheeler recently announced that he will not impose a mandatory vaccination on the city’s police force, a decision that was made after the local police union lobbied strongly against the city-wide mandatory vaccination, warning that requiring officers to be vaccinated would lead to mass resignations and exacerbate the current staff shortage.
Many officers are “so deeply” opposed to mandatory vaccinations that they would leave force rather than get vaccinated, argued the lead attorney for the Portland Police Association, according to the Willamette Week.
But Murphy says it is reckless for law enforcement officials to fail to abide by government mandates and do what they can to contain the spread of the virus. “They are government workers, they really are not going to have a choice,” he said.
“They got into this business, they put themselves on the line every day, they shoot them and all that, and they worry about a vaccine? This is ridiculous”.
Kim-Farley added: “The police swore to protect and serve … the most important measure to protect themselves, their families and the population against COVID-19 is to get vaccinated.”
(Taken from Newsweek)
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