Police: Fighting vaccine mandates
It’s obvious what cities should do with cops who refuse to be vaccinated, said Rex Huppke in the Chicago Tribune. “Fire ’em.” Police unions in several major cities are fighting vaccine mandates meant to protect city employees and “the people they encounter while doing their jobs.” Chicago police union chief John Catanzara, a Trumpist figure who has defended the actions of Jan. 6 insurrectionists, claims half the city’s cops will quit in response to Mayor Lori Lightfoot’s vaccine mandate. His threats are empty—most Chicago cops are already vaccinated—and getting a safe, effective vaccine in the midst of a pandemic is hardly an onerous job requirement. Cops too dumb or selfish to comply “shouldn’t be on the force in the first place.” Officers who shun the shot are “shirking their duty” to protect and serve, said the Raleigh, N.C., News & Observer in an editorial. That’s an indication they believe that rules don’t apply to them, and they’re doing cities a favor by weeding themselves out.
These mandates “are bound to backfire,” said Glenn Reynolds in the New York Post. Chicago, “already a hotbed of crime and murder,” and other major cities are coping with rising crime rates and cannot afford to lose droves of officers.
Unvaccinated officers “could become America’s own insurgents,” said Steven Cook in Foreign Policy.com. Right-wing extremist groups like the Proud Boys and Boogaloo Bois “specifically seek to recruit law enforcement officers,” who are “trained in violence” and see themselves as “different from so-called civilians.” Unlike workers in other industries, police officers who oppose mandates “have the means to seek redress and revenge through their guns and training.” Firing them carries real risk.
Sorry, but unvaccinated cops are demanding “the privilege to infect as many people as they want to,” said Paul Waldman in The Washington Post. They hope their performative acts of defiance will “turn them into right-wing media stars,” but their “reckless, selfish” behavior puts lives at risk— including their own. Since the pandemic started, “five times as many police officers have died from Covid-19 as from gunfire.” Just as we’ve seen in other organizations, “the initial wave of highprofile refusers will be followed by the less-noticed news that almost everyone got vaccinated in the end.” As for the small percentage of cops who decide to quit? “Good riddance.”