Seattle May Fire 1/3 Of Depleted Police Force Due To Vaccine Mandate Noncompliance

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Seattle, WA – The Seattle Police Department could potentially lose another third of its already-depleted force by the middle of the month due to the city’s COVID-19 vaccine mandate.

The City of Seattle adopted a mandate imposed by Washington Governor Jay Inslee which requires all healthcare workers and state employees to be fully vaccinated by Oct. 18 if they want to keep their jobs, KING reported.

In order to meet the deadline, employees needed to have received the Johnson & Johnson single-dose vaccine or their second dose of the Moderna or Pfizer vaccine by Oct. 4 to qualify as being fully vaccinated by Oct. 18.

Employees who provided proof of their vaccination by Oct. 5 were also awarded with eight hours of paid leave, The Seattle Times reported.

But as of Oct. 5, as many as 33 percent of the SPD’s sworn employees had not submitted proof of vaccination, according to statistics released by the department.

That means the city could soon lose 354 sworn officers on top of the hundreds of officers who have left SPD since early last year.

“We are at record lows in the city right now,” SPD Chief Adrian Diaz told KING back in April. “I have about 1,080 deployable officers. This is the lowest I’ve seen our department.”

Chief Diaz sent out a letter to SPD staff on Oct. 1 imploring them to “get it done.”