About a quarter of the entire New York City Police Department might be sent home without pay on Friday if they don’t get some relief from the city’s mandatory Covid-19 vaccine requirement. The New York Fire Department is in a similar boat and may see entire stations closed once firefighters are sent home for non-compliance with the mandate as well. The union representing the FDNY is urging members to stay strong and defy the order, as many find it insulting having worked on the front lines for so long, now to be tossed aside in favor of vaccine absolutism.
So far, neither the city government nor the frontline workers have blinked, leading to a stalemate that could end by benching huge numbers of firefighters and police officers while the issue is fought over in court:
The NYPD is doing everything in its power to convince cops to receive life-saving COVID vaccine shots as the city’s mandate deadline looms — a cutoff that could send a quarter of the police force home without pay.
“We have to prepare as if this is going to go into effect Friday evening and that’s exactly what we’re going to do,” Police Commissioner Dermot Shea said on NY1 Tuesday. “We have vaccines available throughout the city for our members.”
Police say that 73% of the NYPD has gotten at least one vaccination shot. The number should increase ahead of the deadline, Shea said. City employees not vaccinated by Friday will be sent home without pay.
The FDNY is openly defying the order, with union support, and may end up with closed stations and diminished service if firefighters are truly sent home on unpaid leave come Friday:
The head of the New York City firefighters union said on Wednesday he had told unvaccinated members to report for duty regardless of an order by Mayor Bill de Blasio to place them on unpaid leave if they fail to get the COVID-19 shot.
New York City firefighters who have risked their own health to save lives during the coronavirus pandemic felt “insulted” by de Blasio’s order to get the shot or face suspension, said Andrew Ansbro, president of the Uniformed Firefighters Association.
“I have told my members that if they choose to remain unvaccinated, they must still report for duty,” Ansbro told a news conference. “If they are told they cannot work, it will be the department and city of New York that sends them home. And it will be the department and the city of New York that has failed to protect the citizens of New York,” Ansbro said.
Again, in a situation where the large majority of these workers are vaccinated or likely have natural immunity from already encountering Covid, what is the sense of requiring 100% compliance? If the goal is to make everyone “safer,” how much safer are residents of New York when nobody is there to fight fires or answer 9-1-1 calls? If someone needs police or the fire department, they likely aren’t stopping to ask about vaccination status in life-or-death situations.
Furthermore, when responding to calls and interacting with the public, firefighters wear masks or in most cases entire sealed firefighting gear, breathing their own oxygen. These situations allow a near-zero opportunity for airborne transmission. Masks work, right? So what’s wrong with keeping the unvaccinated police and firefighters masked? Maybe this is more about control and compliance than it is about “science.”
The entire situation is wrongheaded and short-sighted from Mayor Bill de Blasio, a man who lasted about two seconds as a Democratic presidential candidate in 2019. Vaccination rates will continue to slowly tick up as more workers decide, on their own, to get vaccinated if they choose to, in concert with their personal health care professional. Beyond that, these types of fights with city workers only hurt morale and work to diminish these institutions at a time when they’re already stressed.
It’s not just the FDNY and NYPD, city sanitation workers are also pushing back, leaving trash piling up on city streets as workers intentionally slow service in protest:
When asked what was going on, Teamsters Local 831 President Harry Nespoli, whose union represents the sanitation workers, shot back, “The mandate’s going on.”
“Look, you’re going to have some spots in the city that they feel very strongly about this,” he said.
Nespoli added: “I’ll tell you straight out: I disagree with the mandate because of one reason. We have a program in place right now in the department, which is, you get the vaccination or you get tested once a week.”
Weekly testing seems to be an unacceptable alternative in the Church of Covid, where absolute fealty is required or sinners are cast out to their own damnation of unpaid leave at home until they repent.
If the city continues, and ditches huge numbers of police and firefighters, some estimate wait times for responses could double, or worse. The city is already experiencing unprecedented crime thanks to liberal Democrat policies that treat criminals with kid gloves and demonize law enforcement.
It’s a recipe for a total meltdown of city services during a busy Halloween weekend. Buckle up, de Blasio may decide to drive it right over the cliff in the name of Covid vaccine maximalism and total authoritarian control.
