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Many officials and advocates have rightfully focused on the need to immediately reduce jail and prison populations, especially since the lack of sufficient medical attention, unsanitary conditions, and overcrowding, among other obstacles, combine to create environments where the coronavirus can spread precipitously. The Cook County jail in Chicago, for example, currently has the largest cluster of COVID-19 cases in the country. Guidance from policy experts and advocates has provided a roadmap of how to safely and expeditiously lower the jail and prison population, and governors in Illinois and Kentucky have been taking initial steps. There may also be federal funding available to achieve this, as Congress included $850 million in the CARES Act for law enforcement to prevent and respond to the coronavirus.
At the same time, jurisdictions must do all they can to ensure that more people are not sent to jails and prisons during the pandemic. This begins with changing or modifying policing practices to make them consistent with public health guidelines to maintain physical distancing, which is essential for the health and safety of the public and of police officers themselves. Staffing levels at a number of law enforcement agencies have already been affected due to the spread of COVID-19. More than 2,000 New York City Police Department officers, for example, have tested positive for the coronavirus, and 20 percent of the 45,000-person police force is out sick. Meanwhile, in Detroit, 369 officers have been placed in quarantine, even after more than 400 recently returned from quarantine.
This column provides several recommendations for how police agencies can safely modify their practices in a fair and just manner to prevent the further spread of COVID-19. In an interview with the Center for American Progress,* Ron Davis, the former East Palo Alto, California, police chief and former head of the Office of Community Oriented Policing Services at the U.S. Department of Justice, argues that these changes are consistent with principles of policing in the 21st century:
Police must now apply the public health model of “do no harm first” in making decisions, from arrests to uses of force. Making arrests must transition from being a common tool used by law enforcement to becoming literally a tool of last resort. This counters the notion that the only way to hold someone accountable in our society is to put handcuffs on him, because putting handcuffs now has a different meaning—not only for the person whose freedom is taken, but for the law enforcement officer who has to come within 6 feet to make that arrest. We, as a society, must find viable alternatives to incarceration.
Davis also dispels the notion that incorporating physical distancing or making other changes to policing practices will jeopardize public safety:
Police agencies must make a lot of adjustment to protect their officers and staff from this virus while assuring the public safety needs of the community. In making these changes, we must remember that less is not necessarily bad. The police alone cannot make a community safe. And we have learned over the years that simply adding more police does not equate to more public safety. It takes an entire community working with the police to sustain long-term public safety. So, as we decrease the physical footprint of law enforcement in the community,