Chicago Police Who Fight Vaccine Mandate Invite Chaos

(Bloomberg Opinion) -- Today is the deadline for Chicago police officers to get Covid-19 vaccinations. If they miss that target, they can opt to be tested twice a week for the rest of the year at their own expense. If they don’t get vaccinated or tested, the city says it will suspend them without pay.

John Catanzara, head of the local police union, is double-dog-daring Mayor Lori Lightfoot to go there. He accuses the city of unfair labor practices and refusing to bargain in good faith. He’s advised his members to ignore the mandate and forego their pay. And the kicker: Catanzara says he expects the ensuing furlough will leave Chicago’s streets patrolled by only half of its 13,000-member police force this weekend — at a time when the city’s residents are already contending with escalating crime rates.

Catanzara says his jousting doesn’t amount to a job action, a strike or any other “illegal stuff.” In a recent video message to his members, he says that if the “city still doesn’t want to come and negotiate like civilized human beings, well then I guess we’ll progress what we do going forward.” He advises cops to “stay tuned” and bemoans the “strange times we’re in.”

Strange times indeed. Stranger still because Catanzara and other anti-vaccination, anti-mandate zealots cloak their counterfactualism in rants about individual liberty and government overreach. And they’re willing to go so far as to endanger their own communities.

Such thinking isn’t limited to Chicago police, of course. Consider this video posted last summer by a Los Angeles Fire Department captain opposed to vaccine mandates. “This is not a political issue,” he insists. “This is not left-right. This is not Democrat-Republican. This is not vaxed-unvaxed. This is a fight for freedom of choice. Free will. This is a fight against tyranny.”

I don’t know. I don’t associate a needle jab with Orwell. The vaccine is a shot that protects me and my family and allows everybody to get back to work and socialize. If people can’t be gently persuaded to look after their own health and the well-being of those around them, then mandates are needed. None of this is remotely theoretical, either. If Catanzara’s predictions pan out, Chicago may offer a front-row seat this weekend to the consequences of know-nothing protests in the Covid-19 era.

Lightfoot and the Chicago police have been at odds for some time now, in a series of confrontations stoked by the impact of the Black Lives Matter protests, longstanding police violence and abuses and her own waffling on how best to manage and supervise the force. When it comes to mandates, however, Lightfoot has been a model of clarity.

“The only way we can make this work is we’ve got to hold people accountable, and we are absolutely prepared to do that,” she said as she dispensed some advice to Catanzara’s members. “Protect yourself. Protect your family, protect your partner, protect members of the public. Get yourself vaccinated.”

She brushed off the police union’s threat to sue and said she didn’t think that half the force won’t show up for work this weekend. Her mandate applies to all city workers, not just cops, and she has a practical and constructive reason for remaining steadfast: “The only way that we can maximize safety in our workplace is to get people vaccinated,” she said at a press conference this week.

So far, only about 25% of the Chicago police are vaccinated, so a large gap still has to be closed. It’s unlikely that Catanzara is going to help. When Lightfoot first proposed mandates in August, he was apoplectic. “We’re in America, goddamn it,” he said at the time. “We don’t want to be forced to do anything. Period. This ain’t Nazi f***ing Germany.”

Again, sober-minded public health practices and miraculous vaccines have nothing to do with fascism. Mandates for vaccines against other diseases — including diphtheria, polio, mumps, measles, rubella, tetanus and chickenpox — have been around for a long time. Vaccines prolong lives, keep schools open, grease the wheels of commerce and help build a better future. Like the Covid-19 shots, they’re gifts we’re lucky to have.

We’re also lucky to have public and private leaders who continue to back mandates despite the chaos and threats they encounter. I grew up outside of Chicago, miss it and still admire it as one of the country’s great cities. We can only hope it doesn’t have the weekend that Catanzara and his allies are looking for.

This column does not necessarily reflect the opinion of the editorial board or Bloomberg LP and its owners.

Timothy L. O'Brien is a senior columnist for Bloomberg Opinion.

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