Antivaxxers in uniform: why cops in the USA do not want to get vaccinated

During the same period, four times less law enforcement officers died from bullets. However, even these menacing statistics do not force cops to go to doctors and get vaccinated against coronavirus.

Evgeniy Bai

Police Lieutenant Marcus Dunn, 36, was one of 40 cops in Baton Rouge, Louisiana, who contracted the coronavirus. But they all recovered, and he died. This happened the day before Marcus's scheduled wedding. After this tragedy, most of the police station thought about giving at least one injection. But this was an isolated incident. American cops categorically do not want to be vaccinated, and when they are forced to do this, they threaten to quit immediately.

If now in America 68 percent of the population is fully vaccinated, then among the guards of the law there are almost two times less of them, depending on the state from 35 to 38 percent. And this despite the fact that the police are in constant contact with the population, and to the same extent as doctors or social workers are at risk of becoming infected at any time.

The reasons for these failures are not fully understood by experts. They say the cops may be succumbing to the aggressive rhetoric of conservative politicians who, led by ex-President Donald Trump, are spreading all kinds of vaccine-related conspiracy theories. A number of cops cite religious reasons, although none of the mainstream religions in America oppose vaccination. Finally, the overwhelming majority of police officers are men, and they, to a lesser extent than women, seek to protect themselves from infection.

At the end of this week, a particularly violent confrontation between city officials and police took place in Chicago, which was and remains America's crime capital. There, the city's mayor, Laurie Lightfoot, ordered all city police officers to get their first vaccinations by Friday.

This provoked a violent protest from the head of the local police, John Catansara, who was supported by an influential police union. He stated that his subordinates would not come to work at all after such an ultimatum. "I predict Chicago will have 50 percent or less police on the streets this weekend."

But the conflict did not end there. Katansara, in an interview with the local newspaper Sun-Times, compared the methods of "persuading" the mayor to those of the Nazis. "This is pure Nazi," he said. "They also said," go to the shower, the pills will not harm you. " It is unclear what exactly he meant, but when Mayor Lightfoot accused him of “a fit of rage,” he apologized and said that he did not want to compare everything that happened in Chicago to the Holocaust.

The reluctance to get vaccinated is shown not only by the cops, but also by the fighters of the National Guard. But the police have more opportunities to dictate their terms. The fact is that over the past year and a half, many sites have experienced an acute shortage of qualified personnel. The authorities are to blame for this large cities run by Democrats. They fell for the propaganda of irresponsible adventurers from the famous movement "Black lives matter" - "Black lives are important", who demanded to deprive the police of funding for "systematic racism." In the city of Minneapolis, where a drug addict and thief George Floyd was inadvertently strangled by a policeman in April 2020, the police were actually disbanded, some public formations like former Soviet vigilantes began to play its role.

Congress has long thought about police reform, but Democrats and Republicans still can't agree on what to do to stop cops from hip-shooting at blacks, but this so that at least some order is maintained in the country. And the cops themselves say: "Why do we need such" happiness "- risking our lives every day when they consider you a shame of the nation and cut an already miserable salary."

The consequences of the "racial revolution" did not hesitate to tell - an unprecedented surge in crime was registered throughout the country over the past year. For example, in Chicago during this period of time, according to the AR agency, there were 629 murders against 609 in the past. year and 402 in the year 2019.

And the police chiefs, when they are now required vaccination, answer that they do not want to be left without employees. “If you want to go ahead with the obligatory vaccination, you will be left without protection from criminals and it will be on your conscience, ”says Josh Carter, a police officer in Leesburg, Northern Virginia. "Let's go ahead, but then there will be no one to patrol the streets of the city".