Policing takes on a different look during pandemic
SYDNEY — With much of the globe under stay-at-home orders, police officers are becoming the enforcers of a new coronavirus code that demands what humans naturally resist: complete isolation and obedience.
Empowered by tough new laws and public pressure, police forces are testing how far to go in punishing behavior that is ordinarily routine.
In Australia, authorities have threatened people sitting alone drinking coffee with six months in jail. In Britain, police came under fire for using a drone to film and shame a couple walking their dog on a secluded path. But elsewhere, enforcement has been more aggressive and escalated into serious violence.
In Kenya, officers are under investigation in multiple cases, including the death of a teenager shot while standing on a balcony during a dusk-to-dawn curfew. Police also used tear gas and batons on passengers at a ferry terminal and are being investigated in at least two other deaths, leading President Uhuru Kenyatta to say he regretted the violence.
In the Philippines, President Rodrigo Duterte on Wednesday ordered police and the military to shoot anyone who “causes commotion,” after 20 protesters were arrested as they demanded food during the country’s lockdown.
There is a history of aggressive policing in pandemics and other crises, with officers guarding the sick, enforcing travel restrictions and issuing citations for spitting. What’s different now is that orders to stay home are more widespread, forcing countries, states, cities and towns to grapple with how policing should work when it’s not entirely clear what activities are prohibited.
Defining law and order gets more complicated when people need to keep going outside to work — just to eat. Or, in less dire cases, when a few 20-somethings sitting in the grass might be harmless — or might be reckless spreaders of contagion. Or when the public is anxious and stircrazy, and there can never be enough police to catch every perpetrator.
“People are writing a new playbook daily on how to deal with this thing,” said Chuck Wexler, executive director of the Police Executive Research Forum, a Washingtonbased organization of law enforcement officials and analysts worldwide. “The key question is: How can the police serve in a reassuring role?”
Police officers in many hot spots seem to be acting cautiously. From San Francisco and New York to Bangkok and Milan, more people are complying with rules for social distancing. Traditional crime is down, and those who carry badges are learning to think like doctors in masks — focused on the health of the public and themselves.
It’s been a brutal learning curve.
More than 1,400 officers in New York City have tested positive for the virus. Several police chiefs, in Detroit and elsewhere, have also gotten sick, leading departments worldwide to change how officers interact with their colleagues and the public.
In London, commanding officers now work on alternate days to reduce the chance that the virus will sideline the upper ranks. In Northern Ireland, spit and bite guards are being introduced so suspects won’t get saliva on arresting officers.
Patrol hours have also been extended in jurisdictions big and small to minimize interaction at stations, and more conversations with the public are taking place from squad cars.
A lot of the interactions focus on guiding people home.
In California, where the outbreak appears to be reaching a plateau after two weeks of lockdown, officers have rarely gone beyond verbal or written warnings, said Michael Rustigan, a professor of criminal justice at San Jose State University.
In parts of Florida and Canada, police officials have promised leniency.
“It’s only in the worst-case scenario we’re going to do anything,” Sgt. Michael Elliott, president of the Edmonton Police Association, said last month after lawmakers in that Canadian city passed a law allowing for fines of $1,000 to $500,000 for failing to comply with public health orders. “We don’t want to stress out the citizens any more than we have to.”
But in some places, severe crackdowns suggest that the pandemic is magnifying policing problems that had already existed.
More than two dozen gay men and transgender women were arrested last month in Uganda for flouting rules on social distancing. Campaigners accuse police of targeting a group that has been demonized in the country for years.
In Kenya, where authorities are often accused of heavy-handed tactics, police officers fired tear gas, beat commuters and made some lie face down on the ground at a ferry terminal in the coastal city of Mombasa, hours before an overnight curfew began March 27. Images and videos from the chaos showed passengers coughing, spitting and touching their faces to unblock their mouths and noses.
In a low-income neighborhood east of Nairobi, a 13-year-old boy was shot, apparently by police, as he stood on the balcony of his family’s apartment. He died the next morning. Police said he had been struck by a stray bullet.
Countries with more autocratic governments have been quicker to use antagonistic tactics. Videos from India have shown officers in masks using batons to beat and disperse large groups of people. Last month, Dubai police arrested a European man who posted videos on Instagram showing himself at a beach that had been closed.