For weeks, Los Angeles County Sheriff Alex Villanueva has blasted the county’s vaccine mandate for employees, saying he won’t force his deputies to get inoculated.
It’s a decidedly different stance from the one taken by Michel Moore, chief of the Los Angeles Police Department, who has agreed to enforce the vaccination rules city officials put in place.
And it shows in their vaccination figures. About 53% of 16,070 Sheriff’s Department employees, both sworn and civilian, have had at least one dose of a vaccine, compared with 74% of 12,143 LAPD employees, according to figures released by each agency.
Villanueva has made dramatic claims that the mandate would trigger a mass exodus, on Tuesday telling reporters that about a hundred more employees retired in the last year than in the year before, and that 238 more employees are transferring to other agencies or switching careers. Those figures include departures that occurred before the county mandate was in place.
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