L.A. County Sheriff Says No to Forced, ‘Politicized’ Covid Shots for Cops

Los Angeles County Sheriff Alex Villanueva says he doesn’t want to lose ten percent of his cops by forcing them to choose between their jobs and bodily freedom, so he won’t make them. This is the latest example of a growing number of police agencies opting to keep their cops instead of enforcing an arguably unconstitutional order requiring officers to get a Covid shot.

Villanueva announced on Friday that he would disregard the L.A. County Health Department directive to force his deputies to get the shot by October 1 because he doesn’t “want to be in a position to lose 5, 10% of my workforce overnight on a vaccine mandate.” He later said on Fox News’s “The Ingraham Angle” that the “poorly thought out, poorly executed” mandate was “so politicized, [that] I cannot in good conscience impose a mandate like that.”

LA Sheriff Villanueva says that he will not enforce a vaccine mandate, saying employees are willing to get fired over it. “I don’t want to be in a position to lose 5, 10% of my workforce overnight on a vaccine mandate.” pic.twitter.com/9DNJTeJUoY

— Alene Tchekmedyian (@AleneTchek) October 7, 2021

The elected sheriff oversees the nation’s largest sheriffs department with more than 18,000 deputies.

Villanueva joined Riverside County Sheriff Chad Bianco, who in September announced that “the government has no ability and no authority to mandate your health choices, [and] I will not enforce the vaccine mandate on Sheriff’s Department employees.” He said he took seriously his job as “the last line of defense from tyrannical government overreach.”- READ MORE