A Staten Island judge on Wednesday rejected a motion by a New York City police union to block a city order requiring nearly all municipal workers to be vaccinated by the end of this week.
John Catanzara, the head of Chicago’s police union, advised police officers NOT to comply with the city’s COVID-19 mandatory vaccine and reporting requirements.
Catanzara told fellow officers to openly defy Mayor Lori Lightfoot’s vaccine deadline.
The head of Chicago’s police union has advised officers not to comply with the city’s COVID-19 vaccine reporting requirement and says members should be willing to be sent home without pay rather than submit to the shot mandate for city workers.
With city employees’ vaccine status deadline Friday, Fraternal Order of Police Local 7 President John Catanzara also said in a video posted Tuesday that the union has filed a labor grievance against the city and plans to pursue legal action to fight the mandate.
Mayor Lori Lightfoot, asked about his comments at an unrelated news conference Wednesday, said: “He’s threatening litigation. I say, bring it.”
For Chicago Public Schools, employees who are not fully vaccinated against COVID-19 by Friday’s deadline will still be able to work Monday, but they will have to undergo weekly testing at their schools, the district’s CEO said Wednesday.
John Catanzara announced he will go into a no pay status tonight following the deadline.
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.”