Sheriff’s offices surrounding the metropolitan area of Chicago are stating they will not send their officers to cover the shortfall in city police officers as an outcome of the vaccine mandate.  Keep in mind the elected county sheriff is the highest constitutional officer inside each region.

Chicago Mayor Lightfoot has released all the city officers who refused the vaccine mandate.  Factually it makes no sense according to DuPage County Sheriff James Mendrick, who points out that his office does not have mandatory vaccines and as a result could only be providing assistance with officers who may or may not be vaccinated.

“It doesn’t make sense to say, ‘I only want my residents touching vaccinated people, but I’m going to send all these potentially unvaccinated people from other municipalities to replace them,’” Mendrick said.

CHICAGO –  Two suburban sheriffs said they would not send their deputies to Chicago to help with potential staffing shortages amid a feud between the mayor and a police union surrounding vaccine mandates.

Kane County Sheriff Ron Hain (D) told the Chicago Tribune he did not “feel like the onus is on us to go in there in an emergency situation that was created by poor government and a lack of support the officers receive.” 

Similarly, Kendall County Sheriff Dwight Baird (R) said he was not willing to put his officers at risk to respond to Chicago Mayor Lori Lightfoot’s (D) “self-induced emergency,” the Tribune reported. (read more)

Mayor Lightfoot claims that vaccinated people in Chicago cannot carry and/or transmit the COVID-19 virus.  As a result, she feels the police have a public obligation to get vaccinated so they do not carry the virus in the community.  The mayor has stated she does not want her community exposed to first-responders who may carry the virus, and the vaccination is the only way to eliminate that concern.  This is the cornerstone claim of her public remarks. {link}

The policy of the mayor is grounded in a claim that is totally and utterly refuted by all science.  Vaccinated people carry, transmit and shed the SARS-CoV-2 virus just like non-vaccinated people.  Actually, there is scientific evidence that vaccinated people who contract the virus (so called “breakthrough cases”) factually end up with a much higher viral load, and shed the virus at a much higher rate than non-vaccinated persons.

As a result, a genuine public health policy would be the exact opposite of what Lightfoot is claiming.  If you wanted to keep exposure to the virus at a minimum for those in the public who encounter first-responders, it would actually be better policy to have first-responders be unvaccinated.  The unvaccinated are less of a risk to the general population by a factual outcome of their carrying/shedding less virus.

In another policy maneuver to force the police to get vaccinated, “Chicago Police Superintendent David O. Brown said that those officers who do choose to retire rather than follow City Hall’s orders “may be denied retirement credentials.”  (link)  Chicago police officials made it clear on Thursday that officers who refused to comply with the city’s mandate risk being disciplined or fired.

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