Fraternal Order of Police President John Catanzara after a hearing in Cook County Circuit Court on an FOP motion to halt implementation of Mayor Lightfoot's vaccine mandate at the Daley Center on Oct. 28, 2021. (E. Jason Wambsgans / Chicago Tribune)
As the share of Chicago police officers following Mayor Lori Lightfoot’s vaccine reporting mandate grows, the Chicago Fraternal Order of Police president said Wednesday he wants more than 1,000 officers to disobey direct orders to comply in the hopes of jamming the police department with a flood of paperwork.
“Our position on the portal is the same: Do not comply with the portal,” Catanzara said about the city platform for reporting vaccination status. “The goal now is to have over a thousand or 2,000 officers subject themselves to disobeying a direct order. They can never process that many.”
A mayor’s office spokesman released a statement in response Catanzara’s comments, calling them “yet another desperate attempt by FOP leadership to encourage Chicago police officers to disobey a direct and lawful order from their chain of command.”
The statement also said: “Our police officers are smarter than their union leader’s rhetoric and will not allow public safety to be jeopardized in the name of illogical and baseless misinformation.”
It’s unclear what Catanzara’s latest hold-the-line instructions could mean; he advised officers to refuse the order even if they intend to comply with the reporting rule. Police Superintendent David Brown has said many officers decide to comply before receiving a direct command and has pushed back on Catanzara’s predictions that mass noncompliance would deplete the police force. But there are thousands of police officers who have yet to obey the mandate.
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Among city departments, the police department has one of the lowest response rates to the vaccination reporting requirement. Still, there have been inroads, with the percentage of officers reporting their status jumping from 65% in mid-October to 75.6% as of Wednesday. Overall, nearly 87% of city workers have complied with the reporting requirement, and of those 82% are fully vaccinated, according to city data.
Among the officers who have not complied, only a small number have been stripped of their police powers. A Chicago police spokesman said as of Wednesday, 35 officers are on no-pay status.
There were 40 members of the Chicago Fire Department on no-pay status as of Wednesday afternoon, according to department spokesman Larry Langford. He said an additional eight members of the Fire Department initially went on no-pay status, then opted to enter their vaccine status in the portal and return to work.
In response to a question Monday about the city’s pace of processing officers who aren’t submitting their status, Lightfoot said her administration has been “moving with deliberate speed, emphasis on deliberate.”
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Also Monday, a Cook County judge suspended the city’s Dec. 31 deadline for officers to get vaccinated, ruling that the matter must be arbitrated. But the city can still place officers on no-pay status for not indicating whether they are vaccinated.
The portal where employees upload their status has been a center of contention for Catanzara, who has cited privacy concerns. The mayor has said the portal is fully HIPAA- and ADA-compliant and simply asks a yes or no question on whether the employee is vaccinated, and, for those who are, when they received their doses. City employees are also already required to provide other medical information.
Catanzara’s Wednesday video indicates the union and city are nowhere near a resolution on the city portal, despite Cook County Judge Raymond Mitchell describing the requirement to report as a “minimal intrusion” in his Monday ruling to partially uphold the vaccine mandate.
Following that decision, Lightfoot said Monday that Catanzara is “0-8″ in their current showdown over her mandate.
Separately, the Chicago Police Board is scheduled on Nov. 15 to take up Catanzara’s disciplinary case in a hearing, which could lead to his firing. That case stems from new disciplinary charges that Catanzara allegedly filed a false police report in 2018 against then-police Superintendent Eddie Johnson, who Catanzara said broke the law by allowing marchers on the Dan Ryan Expressway to protest violence in their neighborhoods, and that he filed another erroneous report against a police commander.
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The charges also allege Catanzara made numerous inflammatory comments on social media including disparaging Muslims on Facebook by posting “Savages they all deserve a bullet” in reference to a video of a woman being stoned to death. He later apologized to anyone who was “genuinely offended.”
The Tribune’s Jeremy Gorner contributed.
ayin@chicagotribune.com
jebyrne@chicagotribune.com
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