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As California loosens its face mask requirements, some Los Angeles City agencies are tweaking their policies as well.
At Tuesday’s meeting of the L.A. Police Commission, L.A. Police Department Chief Michel Moore announced that officers who are fully vaccinated are now not required to wear a mask outdoors, unless they are interacting with the public.
Department employees are still required to wear masks indoors or while in their patrol cars, regardless of vaccine status.
The L.A. Fire Department will not change its mask mandate unless L.A. Mayor Eric Garcetti issues a directive to do so, according to a spokesperson for the department. The L.A. County Sheriff’s Department does not have any changes planned to their mask policies either.
Throughout the pandemic, there has been significant resistance in law enforcement to mask mandates and vaccine mandates. In the Sheriff’s Department, 62% of employees were fully vaccinated at the beginning of February, according to their own accounting, and L.A. Sheriff Alex Villanueva has pushed back against the county’s mask mandate.
At LAPD, the numbers are higher, with 82.6% of all employees fully vaccinated as of late January.
