A paradigm shift
A Summary of Law Enforcement Covid-19 Cases and the Consequences of Being infected
The risk to police officers is high
Police departments all over the country are getting hit hard by the Covid-19 virus, just like other first responder groups.
Aside from having to worry about whether they are coming into contact with a citizen who has the virus, officers have to worry when they confront a suspect who is resisting arrest.
Imagine, if you will, that you are an LEO responding to a domestic violence or a fight call. When you get to the scene, you make sure your paper mask is on tight and your nitrile or rubber gloves are on. As you approach the scene, you are confronted with a screaming, bloody suspect who is yelling he/she is infected and is going to take you with him/her. What do you do?
If you engage physically with the suspect, and they are infected, more than likely your mask will be ripped off and your cheap gloves torn.
You cannot walk away, because the suspect could harm their victim even more, or go on to harm others.
This is what LEOs are facing in these times. Even though the above scenarios happened frequently in the past, before the virus no one was concerned with catching this evil bug.
Sure, there were other things to worry about when confronting a bloody suspect, like Hepatitis and AIDS. Those diseases were typically associated with drug users and prostitutes, although not ALL victims of those diseases were drug addicts and prostitutes, they were not usually the suspects in these types of calls.
Currently, you are confronted with a scenario where anyone and everyone could have this virus.
List of Confirmed Cases in Public Safety as of April 1, 2020 The most recent statistics I could find were compiled by Sarah Sinning, Associate Editor of EfficientGov.com. She wrote an article published April 1, 2020 on policeone.com which lists state by state confirmed cases of Covid-19 infections. In that list, each confirmed case is linked to articles associated with that case.
You can probably safely assume the numbers have increased since the date of Ms. Sinning’s update, which was almost 2 weeks ago.
Violence
In New York City on April 1, a man called police and met them with a knife in one hand and a gun in the other. He refused orders to stop advancing and was eventually shot 9 times by responding officers. The gun turned out to be a “replica” handgun. The 55 year-old suspect later said he wanted to commit “suicide by cop” because he thought he had the virus.
In an article on policeone.com, written by Rick Wall, he discusses “suicide by cop” and postulates an increase in these types of cases. Already, before the virus, statistics showed 10–30% of police hootings may have been “suicide by cop.”
In some cities, crimes of domestic violence have escalated as couples and others are isolated together. Here is another article related to that spike.
In Detroit, there has been a 68% spike in criminal homicides and a 37% spike in shootings compared to this time last year. So far, there have been 67 homicides and 173 non-fatal shootings.
In Virginia, police barricaded an apartment complex containing 36 one-bedroom apartments due to a Covid-19 outbreak. It seems the residents didn’t want to quarantine and kept leaving.
In Philadelphia, the police were called to a bus when a man not wearing a mask was asked to leave the bus, but refused. Here, you can see the video of the police removing him from the bus. A rider later thanked the police. The man was released without charges,
Crime Rates
In NYC, burglaries have spiked 75% during the pandemic, while major violent crimes such as rapes, assaults and murders are down.
In Baltimore, the Mayor is proposing millions of dollars in cuts to the Department at a time when police are needed most.
In Houston, the Mayor asked criminals to stay home and “chill” to help the overworked police department keep order. Unfortunately for him, he was mocked mercilessly.
Covid-19 and LEOS
Here are some statistics from 3 large departments, retrieved from public stories available on the internet.
Chicago Police Department According to an article by Sam Charles and Fran Spielman for the Chicago Sun Times, which was posted on policeone.com, Chicago PD, a department of about 13,500 officers, has recently announced the Covid-19 related death of its second officer within 3 weeks. Five employees of the City of Chicago have reportedly died from the virus, one of whom was a firefighter.
According the the article, over 200 officers have tested positive for the virus, and approximately 8% of the department has called in sick on a daily basis, twice the normal rate.
Keep in mind that those 13,500 officers are divided into three shifts a day, 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, and consist of multiple jobs, such as detectives, administrative, patrol, traffic, etc.,.
New York Police Department NYPD numbers around 35,000 members. according to Anna Quinn of Patch, in a story posted on policeone.com,
On Friday, 7,096 uniformed members of the NYPD — nearly 20% of the department’s workforce — called out sick. More than 2,314 NYPD officers and more than 400 of the department’s civilian employees have tested positive for the disease, police said.
According to Thomas Tracy of the New York Daily News, “More than 600 cops who were out sick with coronavirus have already returned to duty, though about 20% of the department’s workforce is still out sick or self-quarantining at home. .”
Tracy’s article also cited the number of deaths as of April 10, 2020 as “Coronavirus has so far claimed the lives of two traffic agents, five civilian employees, four school safety agents, a police officer, two detectives and four members of the NYPD Auxiliary Unit.”
A total of 18 members of the NYPD family have been confirmed to have died of the virus as of the date of this article.
Detroit Police Department Detroit has about 2200 members in its police department. As of April 8th, 2020, the DPD has had 2 deaths,
Capt. Jonathan Parnell, the head of the Homicide Section, and a civilian dispatcher died after contracting the virus, and of the 369 current quarantined Detroit officers, 170 have tested positive. Detroit News by George Hunter
A story in the Detroit Free Press on March 28, 2020, written by Joe Guillen and Gina Kaufman details how the infection of the DPD possibly began.
According to the writers, DPD held a pancake breakfast for the community on March 6th which drew about 100 people, including students. One of the attendees was “Marlowe Stoudamire, a business consultant and Detroit community leader who died March 24 from COVID-19.”
That event, which is one of the first known exposures suffered by DPD officers, resulted in multiple officers being quarantined and at least 3 confirmed cases of Covid-19.
Even Police Chief James Craig tested positive for the virus on March 27, but, at the time, was suffering only mild symptoms.
The City of Detroit recently spent $377,000 on test kits from Abbott Labs that provide results within 15 minutes. The tests, which cost about $40 each were used to test over 352 quarantined police officers. As a result of the tests, police officers who tested negative were able to return to work almost immediately. According to the article, of the 352 tests on officers, 307 were negative and 45 were positive.
Apparently, Mayor Mike Duggan called the outgoing CEO of Abbott and begged for the test. He was rewarded with 5000 tests and 5 machines to analyze them.
Other Deaths Other cities are being hit just as hard, if not harder. Officer Down Memorial Page, odmp.org, is attempting to keep track of officers who have died in the line of duty from the virus. However, the difficulty is ascertaining whether the virus infected the officer while on duty.
You can see the most current list of officer deaths and the cities they worked for at policeone.com. According to the list provided by policeone.com, 26 deaths have been attributed to “line of duty,” also known as LODD, as of yesterday, April 11, 2020
Criteria for “line of duty” deaths The federal Department of Justice’s Office of Public Safety Officers’ Benefits Program (PSOB) and the National Fallen Firefighter Foundation (NFFF) have met to try and determine criteria for, and whether, deaths from Covid-19 qualify as LODD.
In an article on policeone.com “adapted from a post on Billy Goldfeder and Gordom Graham’s FirefighterCloseCalls.com, home of The Secret List”, representatives from NFFF and the DOJ PSOB met to address whether C-19 deaths were considered LODD. The meeting resulted in a “Yes” answer from PSOB with one caveat: you must have documentation.
The DOJ PSOB released a statement concerning this issue. In their statement, the PSOB said,
To establish eligibility for a public safety officer’s death or disability due to COVID-19, the PSOB Act and regulations require that the evidence show that it is more likely than not that the virus resulted from the public safety officer’s exposure while performing a line of duty activity or action. While some states have laws that presume a public safety officer’s infectious disease resulted from their employment, eliminating the need for evidence of when the transmission of a disease or infection occurred, the PSOB Program has no such presumption.
You can view the full statement here.
Why is this important? Because an officer who dies from the virus contracted while on duty, but who cannot provide the required documentation, may be denied death and other benefits that will be needed to support his/her family after they are gone. The types of benefits the family is eligible for are,
death benefits to the eligible survivors of public safety officers who are fatally injured in the line of duty, disability benefits to public safety officers catastrophically injured in the line of duty, and education benefits to the eligible spouses and children of fallen and catastrophically injured officers.
Conclusion
Everyone is being affected by this non-discriminatory virus. Isolation and self-sanitizing are the keys to defeating this virus until a successful treatment is produced.
We need our first responders to be healthy and aware while they are doing their jobs. They are human, just like you and I. But they are tasked with keeping peaceful order while also trying to keep themselves and their families safe, just like many others.
Please give them your support, and don’t be the cause of having them be exposed unnecessarily.
DON’T have parties, DON’T go to church, DON’T socialize in groups, DON’T speed on the roads, and DON’T call them unnecessarily.
DO wear masks and gloves, DO sanitize your hands and work spaces, and DO socially isolate. If we follow those directions, we will get over this event quicker and with less loss of life.
As difficult as it is for those who are in isolation, in my opinion, it’s even more difficult for those on the front line. Let’s not make it harder for them than it already is.
Blessed are the peacekeepers, for they shall be called the children of God. Matthew 5:9
CJ Kowalski is a former Southern California police officer and lawyer. He can be reached at [email protected]. He is also the owner and editor of the new Medium publication, copforum.