By Steve Pomper
There are a lot of us cops and former cops, writing about how deplorably the police officers’ political leaders are mistreating them. We have no illusions about the damage happening to our profession in leftist-run jurisdictions.
For example, I recently got a tweet from an officer I know from the Seattle Police Department (SPD). He’s a good cop that the people of Seattle are fortunate to have serving and protecting them.
He mentions that after over two decades of service to the city, they’ve placed him on administrative leave pending his termination.
So, what did he do? Did he trip an elderly woman in a crosswalk? Did he racially profile a jaywalker or litterbug? Did he ticket a transgender swimmer for a lane violation? Or did he hunt down and shoot a minority in the street? No.
Like so many officers in blue jurisdictions across the nation, he just refuses to be forced to get “the shot.” He said he was told, Seattle will no longer accommodate officers’ exemptions because testing is no longer an option because of the “expense.”
However, according to sources at SPD, the city has tons of test kits because they’re now routinely testing… wait for it… employees who’ve had “the shot.”
Think about this. Employees whether or not they’ve gotten the shot can still get “infected” (are usually asymptomatic), can still transmit it, and the city is testing vaxxed employees. Why not keep testing the unvaxxed too, so employees can keep feeding their families?
Testing the vaxxed but not the unvaxxed flip-flops logic unless it’s not about health but about a city’s political leaders’ power and control over employees. Where’s the “undue hardship” in testing the unvaxxed along with the vaxxed? It makes zero sense.
It’s sad if Seattle loses yet another stellar officer (officers), which will be a self-inflicted wound to the city’s primary responsibility to provide public safety—first.
Of course, it’s not just Seattle. Other cities, such as San Francisco, are going through a similar regimen of self-inflicted injuries to its ability to provide public safety to its residents, employees, and tourists (if any still dare to vacation in formerly wonderful leftist-run cities).
Sgt. Rich Cibotti, of the San Francisco Police Department (SFPD), recently wrote a commentary that appeared in The Epoch Times. Seattle and San Francisco are salary and benefits “comparables” regarding labor contract negotiations and have similar staffing requirements and “vaxxing” issues.
But rather than the nuts and bolts of the staffing issue, officer recruiting, retention, and maltreatment by city hierarchy, he addressed a more esoteric concern: the “moral injury” “San Francisco is choosing to inflict…on its cops.”
So, as with Seattle, he addresses his city leaders’ penchant for snagging every arm that comes within jabbing distance. He said San Francisco’s Department of Human Resources (SFDHR) has told the police union (SFPOA) “it is prepared to put all 650-plus members on leave, pending termination, if they don’t get the booster shot by April 15. If all 650 happen to be on patrol, our new patrol number could be 188 cops, or about a station and a half worth of personnel.”
The thing that makes this threat even more egregious and curious, according to Cibotti, “they still haven’t finished firing the first group from the original vaccine mandate.” By deduction, this also tells us this second group apparently acceded to the first shot but won’t be bullied into a string of “boosters.”
San Francisco city officials are delusional if they think this policy makes sense. It sounds more like they just don’t want to be “wrong.” But they are now so far past wrong, wrong is a faded memory. This behavior is something else. Is evil too strong a word? After all, for no legitimate reason, jurisdictions are tossing away officers they so recently touted as heroes for not getting a highly controversial shot.
Can normally moral/ethical people do evil things when properly politically motivated?
Cibotti cites fellow officer and writer Andrew Clifford whom he says recently wrote about the “vaccine booster mandate.” Clifford wrote,
This is not a pro vaccine/anti vaccine issue, it’s an issue about forcing a physical act on someone that they simply don’t want or feel that they need to do. The city is literally causing a self-inflicted ‘moral injury’ on its employees.
According to the Psychology Today Website, the definition of a Moral Injury is the ‘social, psychological, and spiritual harm, that arises from the betrayal of one’s core values, such as justice, fairness, and loyalty.
He’s right. After inflicting a moral injury, the city will likely get a less dedicated and committed officer. Allowing an employer, for whatever reason, to force you to submit to an injection you don’t want or probably need takes a toll on an officer’s psyche no matter the reason.
There is a fascinating video of Officer Clifford saving the life of a man who’d apparently overdosed. According to a tweet from SFPD, “He collapses, stops breathing and has no pulse.” Clifford is seen administering a dose of Naloxone and preforming CPR. He revives the man who can be seen regaining consciousness.
The “vax” extortion, causing losses of officers like Clifford, is especially egregious when it involves a growing body of evidence showing the “vaccines” have much greater risks associated with them than officials initially admitted. Every day, new information is coming to light about the dangers of “the shot” to healthy people. And, even if negative outcomes are relatively rare, isn’t it prudent for people to ask why risk it for a disease that is unlikely to cause most healthy people any harm?
With Pfizer now recommending further boosters, more “vaxxed” officers will probably become reluctant to comply. They truly have to ask, when will the boosters end? What will they try to make me do next to keep my job?
Cops are pretty good at detecting when someone is trying to manipulate them. So, isn’t also prudent to wonder why a city’s/state’s political leadership wants them to get “the shot” so badly? And to ask why they’ve completely ignored natural immunity (which many of the cops likely have)—until recently?
To reiterate what Sgt. Cibotti said, “This is not a pro vaccine/anti vaccine issue…,” Here, it’s about using force to get cops to comply with what seems so clearly now a political and not a medical issue.