And criminals didn’t do it
A whole lot of the dead weren’t vaccinated:
For the second year in a row, Covid-19 was the leading cause of death for law enforcement officers in the United States, according to a report released on Tuesday by the National Law Enforcement Officers Memorial Fund.
A total of 458 officers died in the line of duty in the country last year, making it the deadliest year in more than 90 years and a 55 percent increase from 2020, according to preliminary data compiled by the organization. Of those, it found that 301 federal, state, tribal and local law enforcement officers had died because of Covid-19.
“It has been reported to NLEOMF that these officers have died due to direct exposure to the virus during the commission of their official duties,” the report said.
In the three decades before the pandemic, the organization’s annual tally of officers killed in the line of duty surpassed 200 only twice, in 2001 and 2007. The last time it went above 300 was in 1930.
In recent months, as local governments began implementing vaccine mandates for workers, some police officers and law enforcement unions have pushed back, threatening resignations and legal action.
In October, New York City’s largest police union sued over the city’s vaccine mandate. The Police Benevolent Association of New York said it opposed a vaccine mandate for officers that does not allow an option of being tested weekly instead of being vaccinated. A federal judge this week dismissed a lawsuit filed by several Los Angeles police officers who had sued over the city’s vaccine mandate.
I will just point out that police unions insist that their members be given immunity from the law in many cases because their job is inherently dangerous and they need special dispensation to kill when they feel endangered. And yet they allowed their members to refuse vaccines which killed far more of them than gunfire. I guess it makes sense if you believe that a big part of their job is killing innocent members of the public, whether with guns or a deadly virus. But I don’t think that’s really in the job description. Or it shouldn’t be.