Pittsburgh police Detective Amy Dice went on a QAnon-supporting online show to attack a vaccine mandate for the department and fundraise for her upcoming legal challenge of the policy. 

Last November, then-Pittsburgh Mayor Bill Peduto issued an executive order requiring all city employees to be fully vaccinated for the coronavirus by the following month, though it allowed employees to issue requests for medical or religious exemptions. In June, the city sent letters to police officers whose religious exemption requests were denied, warning of “disciplinary action” if they did not get vaccinated.

One of those officers whose request was denied was Dice, a detective with the city’s police department. Dice appeared on RedPill78, a show hosted by QAnon supporter Zak Paine, on July 11, just days after the conspiratorial right-wing outlet The Epoch Times reported on her criticism of the city’s mandate.

During the interview, Paine, who participated in the January 6 insurrection at the United States Capitol, called Dice a “good friend of the program” and told her, “I salute you, not only for your brave service as a police officer, but also for having the courage to come forward.” Dice claimed her religious exemption request had been rejected in June and promoted her effort to “battle the city on our own.”

Dice, who said she works in the special victims unit, also tied her fight against Pittsburgh’s supposedly “tyrannical government” to the need to combat pedophilia, saying, “Our citizens, they don’t have a tolerance for pedophilia. We — that’s one thing that crosses all races, all socioeconomic statuses is saving the children.” Dice described her purported commitment to “hunt[ing] pedos” as “the common denominator that can unite humanity” and said firing those who don’t get vaccines would hurt the effort. The term “save the children” was co-opted by QAnon supporters in 2020 in order to attract people who care about the real issue of child trafficking.

Dice during the interview also asked for financial help, directing viewers to her GiveSendGo page, to which Paine responded, “I encourage everybody to help out if you can.”

Besides appearing on this QAnon-supporting show, Dice has made other indications that she follows the conspiracy theory and its supporters. On her Truth Social account, which includes images of the far-right icon Pepe, Dice has followed numerous QAnon supporters and influencers, including an account for an aggregator of “Q” posts and an account called “@Q” that has been aimed at QAnon supporters. Additionally, a user identifying herself as Dice posted in a Telegram channel run by a collective of QAnon influencers (including Paine), writing in response to a post on the channel promoting her RedPill78 interview that it was “so crazy to see my face on” the channel and again asking people to donate to her GiveSendGo page.

Dice, whose ties to QAnon and the far-right were not mentioned in a July 13 segment about her legal effort from Pittsburgh’s local ABC affiliate, is not the first police officer to appear on a QAnon-supporting show. Last year, a Canadian police officer who was under investigation went on the show Patriot Streetfighter, during which its QAnon-supporting host, Scott McKay, discussed Q explicitly. She is also part of a broader community of QAnon-supporting and QAnon-sympathetic cops. Her appearance is also further evidence of the connection between anti-vaccine figures and the QAnon movement, which have increased since the coronavirus pandemic began.