Police officers who can’t abide by the law shouldn’t be on the force
It was reported last week that 34 New York City police officers took unpaid leave rather than comply with that city’s vaccine mandate. For this, New Yorkers should thank them.
And then, find a way to fire them.
Supposedly, according to the city’s police unions, as many as 10,000 uniformed officers out of about 35,000 had been set to walk off the job. To have only a tiny fraction of that number carry out the threat is something of a relief. But yes, the city owes thanks to the 34 cops who did, because that was an act of public service.
Meaning that they outed themselves as officers who were likely unfit for duty. Valid medical and religious exemptions aside, it seems reasonable to suspect a high correlation between refusal to obey vaccine mandates and susceptibility to the right-wing extremism, outlandish conspiracy theories and utter disconnect from reality that have ignited vaccine — and mask — mandate resistance for the better part of two years.
As was made clear by the fact that sworn officers took part in the Jan. 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol, the ranks of law enforcement have been infiltrated by radicalized cells of these so-called conservatives. Anything that roots them out is something for which Americans should be grateful, and if they are willing to self-identify, to, in effect, hold up their hands and be counted, so much the better.
It is hard to get a handle on the size of this movement. Is it a minuscule splinter of the total force as New York would seem to suggest? Or is it more? One hopes it is the former, but even if it is the latter, we’re still better off doing without them than caving in to them. Yes, losing a critical number of police officers would constitute a threat to public safety. But so would leaving unvaccinated officers in place to interact daily with an unsuspecting public.
And that’s just in the short term. Over the long term, there is another — arguably, greater — concern. Meaning that of leaving law enforcement power in the hands of those who clearly don’t respect the law, who think themselves above it.
People often rhapsodize about police as a “thin blue line” standing between us and social chaos. The fact that chaos is hard upon us is obvious from the perusal of any random day’s news. Last week, for instance, hundreds of QAnon followers stood in the rain in Dallas’ Dealey Plaza where John F. Kennedy was murdered on Nov. 22, 1963, waiting for the return of the 35th president and his namesake son, who died in a plane crash on July 16, 1999. They believed the two John Kennedys, the elder now 104 years old, would return that day to install Donald Trump as president.
Note that this act of mass lunacy barely penetrated public consciousness. It’s a bad sign when the breakdown of norms becomes the norm. Worse, too many police are now to be found on the other side of that breakdown, contributing to it instead of defending against it. Refusing to obey duly constituted authority by taking a shot? Really? That’s a dereliction of duty for which the entire profession should be ashamed.
Make no mistake: To lose 34 cops — or 3,400 or 34,000 — is to lose a critical investment in time, training and human capital. But to lose them in this way and for this reason is also to separate wheat from chaff.
When you put on that badge, it means something. That you now work for your fellow citizens. That you represent an ideal. And that you uphold the law. Part of which is obeying the law.
Any cop who can’t do that shouldn’t be a cop in the first place.
What will you be having?” It’s a simple question, a culinary fork in the road that thousands of waiters will ask customers at restaurants across Miami today. Some will go with arroz con pollo, others stone crab — and there might be a few salads thrown in there, too. In the end, all the choices are, generally speaking, equally palatable.
Washington politicians and pundits would like us to believe we’ve come upon a similar fork in the road in the debate over President Biden’s Build Back Better Plan, with equally tasty choices in either direction. They’re wrong. With every word they utter, these modernday Cassandras clutch their pearls and wail about the potential costs, while ignoring the higher cost of inaction.
There is no fork in the road. We don’t even have a menu of half measures in front of us. We can either choose to move forward together or stay stuck and stymied in an economic system woefully unprepared to address the realities of climate change and the systemic inequality it creates.
Instead of staring at each other across 1,300 miles, perhaps senators should just come to Miami. The ever-more-frequent king tides in Miami Beach make rain boots a more practical option than stilettos for fashionable folks.
In reality, Miami-Dade, Broward, Palm Beach and Monroe counties face a bleak future should federal inaction on climate continue. Rising sea levels could put the entire region under water by the end of the century, yet, instead of making changes in policy, the Army Corps of Engineers proposed spending $4.6 billion to build a 20-foot seawall that would have protected a mere six miles of downtown Miami and the financial district. Meanwhile, lessaffluent residents in Hialeah and Opa-locka would have had to learn to swim.
For more than a decade, forward-thinking leaders from all four South Florida counties have collaborated with my organization, the Institute for Sustainable Communities through the
Southeast Florida Regional Climate Change Compact to implement policies that reduce greenhouse gases and position the region to delay the coming catastrophic impacts.
But Florida is a peninsula, not an island. We cannot fight this fight alone. Florida’s future depends on leaders of all political persuasions in Tallahassee, Washington, D.C. and in capitals around the world addressing the problem with the ambition and seriousness it deserves. President Biden’s plan offers a good first step.
Build Back Better would make a $63 billion down-payment on updating our nation’s dilapidated water infrastructure. That might sound like a lot, but a report from the Natural Resources Defense Council suggests the true price tag for everything that needs fixing is more than $1 trillion — and that report is 3 years old. Why are we putting a tiny Band-aid on a gaping wound? We must do better.
As currently proposed, the legislation offers $555 billion toward a transition to a low-carbon economy, a handsome pile of cash for you, me and anyone not named Jeff Bezos. But it really represents a drop in the bucket. Woods Mackenzie estimated that completely decarbonizing the U.S. power grid would cost roughly $4.5 trillion. If you are white and wealthy, you probably have no idea where the nearest coal plant is, but I promise you, if they are low-income, many of your fellow AfricanAmerican citizens do. In 2012, an NAACP report noted that 6 million Americans lived within three miles of a coal-fired power plant. Each of those Americans had a per-capita income of $18,400, less than half the national per capita income. 40% were people of color. Non-Hispanic African Americans are more than 40% more likely to have asthma than non-Hispanic whites. Why are we stopping at $555 billion? We must do better.
Americans, particularly those from communities that can only dream about the American Dream, deserve better than the race to the bottom we’re seeing in these U.S. Senate negotiations. We need strong, comprehensive federal action that builds an economy that lifts all Americans up and prepares us to meet the challenges of a changing climate and world.
If not, we’ll remain stuck and stymied, just as we are now. And who wants to have that?
Deeohn Ferris is president of Institute for Sustainable Communities.