10/18/2021 / By JD Heyes
America’s third-largest city, which is already violent enough and home to some of the highest murder rates in the country, is about to get a whole lot more dangerous if police officers follow through on a demand from the head of their union.
Chicago Mayor Lori Lightfoot is among the many left-wing lunatic Democrats shunning “the science” who has ordered all of the city employees to get the COVID-19 mandate or else they will lose their jobs.
And while most employees tend to be vital to the function of large cities, there are few that are more vital than emergency workers — like police officers, whose presence literally keeps the fabric of society from unraveling completely.
In a video posted late last week, Chicago Fraternal Order of Police President John Catanzara is directly challenging Lightfoot’s order, imploring officers to ignore her mandate and let the chips fall where they may.
“Do not fill out the portal information,” he said. “I’ve made my status very clear as far as the vaccine, but I do not believe the city has the authority to mandate that to anybody—let alone that information about your medical history.
The union boss said that the organization is preparing to file a lawsuit against the city and Lightfoot’s mandate, “which requires city workers to report their vaccine status by Friday or be placed on a ‘no-pay’ status,” The Epoch Times reported.
“It’s safe to say that the city of Chicago will have a police force at 50 percent or less for this weekend coming up,” Catanzara said.
“I can guarantee you that no-pay status will not last more than 30 days,” Catanzara said on Tuesday. “There’s no way they’re going to be able to sustain a police department workforce at 50 percent capacity or less for more than seven days without something budging.”
“This is very clearly not a job action,” he noted, “not a call for a strike.”
The outlet reported further:
The police union head in his video instructs members to file for exemptions to receiving the COVID-19 vaccine but to not enter that information into the city’s vaccine portal.
Responding to Cantanzara’s video during a press briefing on Wednesday, Lightfoot accused him of spreading false information, dismissing most of his statements as “untrue or patently false.”
“What we’re focused on is making sure that we maximize the opportunity to create a very safe workplace,” Lightfoot told the media. “The data is very clear. It is unfortunate that the FOP leadership has chosen to put out a counter narrative. But the fact of the matter is, if you are not vaccinated, you are playing with your life, the life of your family, the life of your colleagues, and members of the public.”
After Lightfoot issued the vaccine mandate in August, Catanzara said the requirement is similar to how Nazis told their victims that gas chambers they were herded into were really just showers.
“This ain’t Nazi [expletive] Germany … ‘Step into the [expletive] showers, the pills won’t hurt you,’” he told the Chicago Sun-Times, though he later apologized for his choice of words.
According to the Chicago Tribune, Lightfoot’s administration is also suing to be able to enforce her mandate.
“As Chicago’s Mayor, I cannot and will not stand idly by while the rhetoric of conspiracy theorists threatens the health and safety of Chicago’s residents and first responders,” Lightfoot said in a statement Friday morning.
She then said that Catanzara has “time and again deliberately misled our police officers by lying about the requirements of the policy and falsely claiming that there will be no repercussions if officers are insubordinate and refuse to follow a City and Department directive or order.”
If she wins and the cops bail, Chicago won’t be fit for normal human existence.
Sources include:
Tagged Under: chaos, Chicago, Chicago PD, collapse, emergency, law enforcement, lawsuit, Lori Lightfoot, police, police officers, refusal, social unrest, vaccine mandate, violence, walkout
COPYRIGHT © 2020 antipolice.news
All content posted on this site is protected under Free Speech. antipolice.news is not responsible for content written by contributing authors. The information on this site is provided for educational and entertainment purposes only. It is not intended as a substitute for professional advice of any kind. antipolice.news assumes no responsibility for the use or misuse of this material. All trademarks, registered trademarks and service marks mentioned on this site are the property of their respective owners.