Six New York City firefighters have been suspended without pay after they drove their truck to a state Senator’s office to protest the city’s vaccine mandates. The mandates have been fiercely resisted by police and firefighters.
State Senator Zellnor Myrie told CBS News that firefighters from Ladder 113 in Brooklyn parked outside his office on Friday morning, as a vaccine mandate for city workers came into effect. The firefighters allegedly inquired about the whereabouts of Myrie himself, and told a staffer that the senator would have “blood on his hands” as a result of walkouts over the mandate, a phrase Myrie interpreted as a threat.
Fire Commissioner Daniel Nigro suspended the firefighters for four weeks without pay, and called their protest “a highly inappropriate act.”
"If you are asking for my personal whereabouts and you follow it with blood being on the government's hands for a vaccine mandate, any objective observer is going to connect those two and receive them as a threat," Myrie said. "I believe my staff did receive it as such and I think it's highly inappropriate."
One day before the six firefighters took their protest to Myrie’s office, hundreds of firefighters, police officers and other first responders rallied outside Gracie Mansion, Mayor Bill de Blasio’s official residence. Andrew Ansbro, the president of the FDNY Firefighter Association, whose members participated in the protest, warned that 45% of the city’s firefighters are unvaccinated, and up to 40% of New York firehouses will be forced to close down due to staff shortages after the deadline to receive the vaccine expires.
“The response times are going to go through the roof. We’re just not going to be able to get to the emergencies in time,” Ansbro told Fox News Radio on Wednesday, adding that “fires are going to burn longer.” Ansboro called on firefighters to defy the mandate and “report for duty” regardless, forcing the decision to send them home onto the city.
The city’s police officers are equally furious. On Wednesday, a Staten Island judge declined a lawsuit filed by the Police Benevolent Association, an NYPD union, to block de Blasio’s vaccination mandate from being implemented. The union’s chief, Patrick Lynch, said the ruling has set the city “up for a real crisis.”
According to CBS News, nearly a quarter of New York City’s cops are unvaccinated, and facing unpaid leave for not complying with the mandate.
Resistance to the jab has sprung up in cities and states across the country. A number of state troopers in Massachusetts have chosen suspension instead of vaccination, with their union warning that further suspensions risk compounding already “historically low” staffing numbers. Troopers in Washington state have also walked off the job in protest, and vaccine requirements have been defied by more than a third of police officers in Chicago, one of the US’ most dangerous cities.
Back in New York, Mayor de Blasio claims that 86% of municipal workers have been vaccinated against Covid-19. Mandates, however, have proven unpopular with more than just cops and firefighters. Teachers have tried and failed to block the mandate in court, and unvaccinated healthcare workers have chosen unemployment over inoculation. Protests have also broken out against de Blasio’s vaccine passport system, required throughout the city for most indoor activities.
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