Firing Police for Vaccine Refusal Could Transform Them Into Extremists
There is a similar dynamic in the United States, where politicians both believe they need the police to keep the streets safe and also fear them as maintaining order is the source of police officers political power. If police union demands are not satisfied, the rank and file have the ability to place public safety in jeopardy, forcing politicians to placate them. To be sure, it s not certain what the results of police withdrawing from the streets would be as they did in the wave of strikes a century ago that helped cement police union power or whether such a move would backfire on them politically. But no politician wants to take that chance. The result is no tangible change and ever-increasing budgets devoted to unaccountable police officers and the departments they serve in.
The second lesson from the Middle East comes from Iraq. In response to the police union s political shenanigans in her city, Chicago Mayor Lori Lightfoot accused its Fraternal Order of Police president of fomenting an insurrection. Her word choice was noteworthy.
The disturbing and violent precedent for what could happen if large numbers of vaccine-resistant police are fired was seen in Iraq when the United States dissolved the Iraqi armed forces in May 2003. In one fell swoop, the order left thousands upon thousands of individuals with military training without the means to support themselves and their families. This misguided decision contributed to bloodshed and instability for years.
Federal, state, and local officials should think long and hard before letting go of such large numbers of people trained in violence and encouraged to think of themselves as different from so-called civilians. This is especially so in a country with militarized policing, where right-wing extremist groups specifically seek to recruit law enforcement officers and where the state s monopoly over violence is weakening.
Even if just a fraction of the United States vaccine-resistant police officers harbor sympathies for extremist right-wing groups such as the Boogaloo Bois, Three Percenters, Proud Boys, and others dismissing them is potentially further radicalizing and destabilizing. It is a bad idea to want these people to be unmoored in a political environment where right-wing nationalist and supremacist narratives have become more prominent.