Los Angeles County Sheriff Doubles Down on Not Enforcing Vaccine Mandate as He Warns of Mass Exodus
upstart writes:
Los Angeles County sheriff doubles down on not enforcing vaccine mandate as he warns of mass exodus:
Los Angeles County Sheriff Alex Villanueva warned Tuesday of a possible public safety threat due to a "mass exodus" of deputies from the department and blamed the county's vaccine mandate.
Villanueva accused the Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors of poor policy-making and pointed to an executive order issued by the chair of the board in August that required all county employees to be fully vaccinated against Covid-19 no later than October 1.
Days after the county deadline, Villanueva said he wouldn't enforce the mandate.
"I don't want to be in a position to lose 5, 10% of my workforce overnight on a vaccine mandate," Villanueva said last month.
The Los Angeles County Sheriff's Department employs about 16,000 people in the nation's most populous county, just over half of whom are vaccinated against Covid-19, according to the department.
On Tuesday, Villanueva said only about 42% of the department's sworn personnel have been vaccinated and 3,137 deputies are at risk of termination due to the mandate.
And, the sheriff said, many unvaccinated deputies are voluntarily leaving the department to escape the vaccination requirement.
"Had (the Board of Supervisors) not talked all this nonsense about the mandate, I probably would have gotten better results at getting my employees vaccinated over time," Villanueva said.
According to Villanueva, the department typically sees just over 500 retirements each year, but that number is up to just over 600 in the past 12 months.
Coupled with an additional 238 employees leaving the department for reasons other than retirement, Villanueva said the departures are "disrupting our ability to provide public safety services to Los Angeles County."
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