On Aug. 9, Democrat Mayor Jenny Durkan announced a COVID-19 vaccine mandate for all city employees, including members of the Seattle Police Department (SPD). Durkan made her announcement in lockstep with Washington Gov. Jay Inslee's vaccine mandate for state employees and healthcare and childcare workers.
"Vaccines are safe, effective and save lives," wrote Durkan in a tweet. "[City government employees] must be fully vaccinated by Oct. 18 to help us reopen safely while protecting employees and the public. We will evaluate plans based on science and King County Public Health guidance."
In response to the vaccine mandate, SPD officers across the city's precincts are organizing and encouraging one another to not comply with the vaccine mandate. They are even petitioning other officers to not hand over their vaccination records to the city government.
The pushback against the vaccine mandate is being led by a group of officers called SPD United. According to sources that spoke with The Post Millennial, SPD United is made up of both vaccinated and unvaccinated police officers that believe in the right of SPD officers to make their own choices regarding their health.
SPD United has put up posters in police precincts all over the city encouraging officers to unite against the vaccine mandate.
"Unite! Do not give your vaccination status!" reads one poster. "Hold this line. We rise and fall together." The poster had a QR link to a petition signed by police officers who are against the vaccine mandate.
SPD United has received a lot of pushback from their higher-ups within the SPD. At least one police captain has been reported ordering officers to take down SPD United posters in his precinct.
Despite this opposition, SPD United has not been deterred from continuing efforts to fight back against the mandate. According to one officer involved, the group is vowing to "hold the line."
"This mission is one of human rights, constitutional rights, civil liberties and freedom of choice," reads SPD United's mission statement on the group's website. The statement further reads:
"The freedoms of police officers have been and continue to be stripped away, one by one… [The city has] demanded private medical information so they can divide the department by those who are vaccinated and those who are not (for legal and religious medical reasons). This is medical apartheid, and as it actively tears our society apart, it will certainly do the same for SPD."
SPD United's website features a disclaimer that the anti-vaccine mandate effort is not endorsed by the Seattle Police Officers Guild (SPOG), the main police union that represents rank-and-file SPD officers. But back in August, SPOG President Mike Solan warned that the mandate could lead to terminations.
"If you are advocating for more police officers because you know crime is on the rise, you need more cops because of what the City Council did," he said during an interview. "Why are you threatening us with our jobs [if] you don't get this vaccination? It's unbelievable to me, it doesn't make any sense." (Related: Oregon firefighters, police officers sue Gov. Brown over covid vaccine mandate.)
SPD could lose 1o% to 20% of uniformed officers over vaccine mandate
If the vaccine mandate for Seattle city employees continues, over 200 SPD officers could lose their jobs because they are currently not vaccinated.
One of The Post Millennial's sources within the SPD believes the number of officers who could get terminated over the mandate is closer to 300. The nearly 100 other officers who will also be fired are the vaccinated officers who do not want to submit their private medical data to the city.
This means the SPD could lose anywhere between 10 to 20 percent of its current uniformed officers due to the vaccine mandate.
This is already on top of the 300 officers who quit or were fired after the Seattle City Council defunded the SPD.
The massive and sudden loss of police officers is expected to cause a domino effect, with more officers leaving the SPD because of the expected unsafe number of police officers on the streets to effectively keep the community and themselves safe.
The SPD is already staffed at record lows not seen since the 1980s. On most nights, only about 70 officers are patrolling the city. This helped spur on the surge in violent crime. Seattle is already set to break the 26-year-high homicide rate set in 2020.
Learn more about the disastrous consequences of vaccine mandates by reading the latest articles at Vaccines.news.
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