About
half of the over 6,000 employees seeking exemptions from the city's
COVID-19 vaccination mandate come from the Los Angeles Police
Department.
By Elizabeth Chou and Josh Cain
Source Daily News, Los Angeles
More than 6,000 Los Angeles city employees, or 11% of the total
workforce, plan to petition for exemptions from the city's vaccination
mandate, according to data released Tuesday, Sept. 14.
About half
of the employees seeking exemptions, or more than 3,000, work in the Los
Angeles Police Department, according to the data. Those employees make
up about a quarter of the police department workforce.
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The
data was included in a memo to elected officials that was released by
the mayor's office. It also revealed that of the nearly 60,000 city
workers, 48% have so far reported being vaccinated.
Another 40% missed the deadline for reporting their vaccination status and did not respond as to whether they were vaccinated.
The
data release came with admonishments from Los Angeles Mayor Eric
Garcetti that city workers comply with the mandate's requirements.
"Every
city employee is required to provide their vaccine status, and the
deadline has passed," he said in a statement. "Anyone who hasn't given
us that information must do it now."
Garcetti also warned that
while the mandate allows people to petition for an exemption, based on
medical and religious reasons, "we will not tolerate the abuse of these
exemptions by those who simply don't want to get vaccinated."
"To
anyone thinking about filing a disingenuous exemption request, I
strongly urge that you reconsider," he said. "Every request will be
carefully vetted, and our goal will always be to get as many Angelenos
vaccinated as possible."
Council President Nury Martinez also
issued a statement urging city workers "to step up and do what's right
by getting vaccinated."
"Personnel staff will consider these exemption requests on a case-by-case basis and go from there," she said.
The
data was released after the city extended a deadline last week for city
workers to report whether they intend to file for those exemptions.
Speaking
to police commissioners Tuesday morning, LAPD Chief Michel Moore said
he was aware of some of his officers sharing misinformation about
vaccines themselves.
Moore said COVID-19 vaccination mandates are "a subject that has been weaponized in our political discourse."
The chief added: "Some of our members have participated in that as well."
Whether
any of the thousands of religious or medical exemption requests will be
upheld, Moore left that up to the criteria still to be hashed out by
city leaders.
However,
the chief also said he met on Monday with LAFD Chief Ralph Terrazas,
who leads another city department with a significant number of
vaccine-hesitant workers. He said both would not relent on their efforts
to push more employees to get vaccinated.
Just a third of fire
department employees have reported to the city that they are vaccinated,
while 42% did not respond at all. More than 400 fire department
employees, or 12.5%, filed saying they intend to petition for an
exemption.
"My intention to track the unvaccinated number each week, until that number reaches zero," Moore said.
Police
Commission President William Briggs said he was worried about the
number of complete vaccinations for LAPD officers, still at around 47
percent despite weeks of the department pleading with officers to get
their shots.
"We appear to have reached a plateau with department personnel," Briggs said.
LAPD started
a mobile vaccination program last month, and still the numbers have not
budged much, even though Moore said several hundred officers and
civilian employees took advantage of the mobile sites.
The data
also revealed that several large city departments also lagged in the
number of vaccinated workers, ahead of the Oct. 20 deadline for meeting
the city's vaccine mandate.
Of those, the lowest vaccination rate
was in the Department of Public Works' sanitation bureau — where only
29% of workers reported being inoculated against COVID-19.
In the
past week, activists and public health experts had raised concerns about
Sanitation-led crews conducting clean-ups at encampment sweeps, in
which they could come into direct contact with unhoused Angelenos who
are at a higher risk of dying from COVID-19 than the general population.
Public
works department spokesperson Elena Stern said Tuesday that the
requirement that employees who have not completed their "vaccine
verification" be tested weekly should encourage them to report their
vaccine status.
She
added that the department "continues to encourage employees to take
advantage of an abundance of vaccination opportunities, both those
offered by the city and beyond."
Stern added that employees of all
of the Department of Public Works, not just the sanitation department,
are expected to be "responsive to the city's request for vaccination
status."
"Further, we strongly encourage all of the women and men
who serve the city under the banner of Public Works to take advantage of
the abundant vaccination opportunities available to them, in compliance
with the recently passed ordinance," she said.
So far just 44% of
Public Works' more than 5,400 employees have reported as being
vaccinated, while 43% haven't responded, according to the data released
Tuesday. Another 14% of employees indicated their intention to file for
an exemption.
Other departments that had low percentages of
employees reporting as fully vaccinated include Street Services,
Recreation and Parks, Water and Power and the Fire Department, all of
which fell below 50%.
LAPD, including its civilian workers, was at
51% vaccinated. It was unclear what the percentage was only for sworn
employees, but data released by the police department showed that as
of Sept. 3, 47% of officers were fully vaccinated.
The department has been in the spotlight in recent weeks for its vaccination rate, as well as the high number of officers who have contracted COVID-19 and died.
Six LAPD officers last week also sued the city hoping to block the mandate.
Meanwhile,
L.A. leaders are still in talks with city employee labor unions to work
out what the fallout would be, if any, for workers who do not comply
with the ordinance.
While the mandate requires that vaccination be
a condition of employment for city workers, the ordinance approved by
city leaders in August does not specify whether that means workers would
be terminated if they were not vaccinated.
Meanwhile, city
officials, aligned with Garcetti's public statement today, are
continuing to urge workers to comply with the mandate, as well as to
report their vaccination status.
Mayoral aides did not discuss
what efforts or ideas were being considered to raise the rate of
compliance, in time for the deadlines set in the ordinance.
Those
deadlines include Oct. 5, which is when employees would need to have
their second dose, or a one-shot Johnson and Johnson vaccine. The
earlier deadline accounts for the recommendation that to be considered
fully vaccinated, the person needs to wait two weeks for the shots to
take effect.
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