Viral threat creates a new beat for US law enforcement
NEW YORK — In New York City, they’ve started dismantling basketball hoops to prevent people from gathering in parks and playing. In Lakewood, New Jersey, police broke up a wedding being held in violation of a ban on large gatherings. And in Austin, Texas, officers are encouraging people to call a hotline to snitch on violators of the city’s orders for people to stay home.
Police departments are taking a lead role in enforcing social distancing guidelines that health officials say are critical to containing COVID-19. Along with park rangers, fire inspectors and other public servants, officers more accustomed to chasing suspects and solving crimes are spending these days cajoling people to stay at least 6 feet apart.
“We’re used to crowds, we’re used to lines, we’re used to being close together,” New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio said at a briefing last week. “No more.”
The no-more mandate has forced the New York Police Department — a squad that normally prides itself on protecting packed crowds like the ones at the Times Square New Year’s
Eve celebration — into service dispersing small groups of people on city streets and public spaces as they attempt to stop the spread of a silent killer.
For starters, the nation’s largest police department made thousands of visits to bars and restaurants to make sure they were observing a shutdown of dinein services imposed this month, resulting in warnings but only a handful of citations.
Now comes an effort to impose restrictions in parks, playgrounds, housing project courtyards and sidewalks, where some people to congregate out of habit or indifference as temperatures rise. On Wednesday, de Blasio said the city was removing basketball hoops at 80 of its 1,700 public courts — places where he said people were ignoring instructions not to shoot around with anyone outside their household.
Enforcement also will include marked patrol cars driving through Brooklyn’s Prospect Park and other popular outdoor escapes around the city, broadcasting recorded reminders about the importance of social distancing.
People are not being discouraged from getting out for a breath of fresh air solo, as couples or as families. But other activities like team sports or gatherings like outdoor family barbecues are going to be shut down, de Blasio said.
“If we see people in groups, we’re going to break them up,” he said.
In New Jersey, police charged three people in recent days for holding large gatherings in defiance of a state ban. In San Francisco, organizers of a party planned for about 200 people finally canceled Wednesday after the city attorney warned they could face a $1,000 fine and possibly a year in jail for posing a threat to public health during the coronavirus pandemic.
For now, the NYPD is trying to avoid a more lax approach used in Italy that is believed to have only fueled infection rates, while avoiding any semblance of the Big Brother-type crackdown in China.
As the crisis worsened, Italy ordered police to patrol cafes to make sure that people kept their distance and that shops shut at 6 p.m. each day, only to see the death count continue to rise. It has since shut down all bars and cafes.
In China, officials took more extreme measures, including locking people inside their apartment complexes.