There’s a great deal of hand-wringing in the media about stories of police officers threatening to quit their jobs if they are required to get the Covid19 vaccine. Most police officers in the United States either entered the Police Academy straight out of high-school, or have an Associate’s Degree from a community college. Working as a police officers allows them to make salaries of well over $50,000 per year, with full medical and dental and a generous retirement package. People with the kinds of credentials that most police officers have aren’t going to be able to make anywhere near that much in the private sector. The fact that there are officers willing to leave the force over the Covid19 vaccine suggests that the overwhelming majority of those officers threatening to leave are right-wing extremists who have immersed themselves in right-wing propaganda via social media, and are likely to be sympathetic to white nationalist ideologies, and prone to belief in wild conspiracy theories like Q-Anon. Individuals who are beholden to Nationalist ideologies and far-flung Internet conspiracy theories are not temperamentally suited to uphold and enforce the law.

Getting rid of MAGA cops should be regarded as a golden opportunity for our nation’s police departments. The elimination of police officers with far right beliefs dramatically reduces long term liability for police departments. Going forward we should expect to see a nationwide reduction in the number of police shootings of black men and women as a result of the Covid19 vaccine mandate, and a reduction in excessive use of force complaints against individuals of all races. That is because conservative thinking tends to correlate to authoritarian personality tendencies, and authoritarian personality tendencies correlates to a high degree of sadism, as expressed through a strong desire to demonstrate physical dominance, and taking pleasure in the pain and suffering of others. When those incidents do occur, examination of the data will likely show that the overwhelming majority of incidents occurred in states and jurisdictions where Republican governors and police chiefs actively resisted vaccine mandates, and repeatedly sought to allow officers to remain on the force in spite of officers refusing to get a Covid19 vaccination. The police officers who refuse to get their Covid19 vaccinations are the same ones who sympathized with the January 6th insurrectionists. It’s been documented that there were several current and former police officers who breached the US Capitol building that day, and it’s a good bet none of them were ever vaccinated either.

The American people and our media need to stop pretending that police officers who refuse to get the jab are “good cops” who just “have a different view of things”. These are radicalized white nationalist pricks and sadists who have no business wearing a police badge. The cops that are saying they’ll leave the force rather than get the Covid19 vaccine are the same ones that white nationalists are referring to when they boast of having police officers in their ranks who have access to SWAT grade weaponry. The Covid19 vaccine has created a golden opportunity to radically improve the quality of our nation’s police departments. Elected officials who back down from the enforcement of the vaccine mandate because they fear a temporary shortage of officers are avoiding a bit of pain in the short term, and the cost of that action is the perpetuation of unacceptable levels of police violence, and a nation that is ultimately less secure because individuals with ties to white nationalist movements and believers in far-flung internet conspiracy theories are preserving their access to police training and weapons.