On Friday, the State Police Association of Massachusetts—the union that represents about 1,800 members—announced that “dozens of troopers” had submitted resignation paperwork over the state’s mandated COVID-19 vaccine. The media followed the union’s lead, with dozens of media outlets reporting this news. 

After The Boston Globe reported that only one trooper had actually resigned as of Monday, Daily Kos reached out to state police spokesman David Procopio via email to see how many troopers had resigned as of Tuesday. Guess what? Still only one.   

The union made its statement public Friday after a judge blocked the extension of Republican Gov. Charlie Baker’s Oct. 17 deadline to be vaccinated. The union additionally asked that officers who refused vaccinations be allowed to get COVID-19 tests instead, be required to wear masks on the job, and be extended health benefits covering them if they get sick. 

On Monday, Baker said he wasn’t too concerned over claims that troopers would be resigning. 

“The baby boomer population is basically between the ages of 75 and 55,” Baker said. “And if you think about when state troopers generally start to consider and think about retirement, it’s about during that period, and we’ve seen pretty significant numbers of retirements over the course of the past couple of years.”

A spokesperson for the State Police Association of Massachusetts, Chris Keohan, told the Daily Kos via email Tuesday that they were “unable to provide specific numbers because of the rules surrounding media communications regarding manpower and deployments set forth by the MA State Police leadership (not the union).” He added: 

Meanwhile, the Kansas City Police Department, manned by 1,221 officers, keeps no data on COVID-19 infection or vaccination rates according to Capt. Leslie Foreman, a department spokesperson said in an email to KansasCity.com. Officers are not regularly tested for the virus, although they’re instructed to follow Centers for Disease Control and Prevention guidelines. 

In Overland Park, Officer Freddie Castro, 23, died of COVID-19 after a five-week hospital stay in North Kansas City Hospital. He was not vaccinated. 

In Los Angeles, due to stringent and obviously necessary vaccine mandates for first responders, employees of the Los Angeles Police Department (LAPD) and Los Angeles Fire Department have filed lawsuits and thousands of notices to claim religious or medical exemptions, according to the Los Angeles Times. So far, 10 LAPD employees have died from the virus, and most officers who have tested positive since June were unvaccinated. 

The ongoing argument about personal freedom seems outdated when compared to the U.S. Supreme Court decision in 1905 Jacobson v. Massachusetts, which upheld smallpox vaccination requirements in Cambridge, Massachusetts on the grounds that the public has rights that outweigh personal liberty, even on today’s ultra-conservative court. 

We’re still not sure why the COVID-19 vaccine presents such an issue. As the Los Angeles Times points out, LAPD officers are required as a condition of their employment to be vaccinated against nine other pathogens. 

*This story has been updated to include a comment from a spokesperson from the State Police Association of Massachusetts.