YOURSELVES AT HOME
Chicago police spokesman Tom Ahern said Friday afternoon that scheduled days off for the department’s rank-and-file officers, as well as district supervisors and some specialty teams, were canceled through the weekend.
Those officers will be deployed to the city’s retail areas and major thoroughfares, Ahern said. Normal departmental staffing will resume Monday.
Illinois became the third state to order residents to stay home in response to the global pandemic, following orders issued Thursday night by California Gov. Gavin Newsom and Friday morning by New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo.
Pritzker’s order last week shutting down large gatherings and bars and restaurants provided an early test for enforcement powers, said Keri-Lyn Krafthefer, a partner at the municipal law firm Ancel Glink. Local officials since have flooded the firm with calls for information on how to conduct meetings or enforce Pritzker’s proclamation, and Krafthefer said her advice was to use their authority with discretion.
“We’re telling them to be reasonable. We don’t want them stopping everybody on the street, and asking them ‘Are you really going to pick up a prescription? Are you really going to a grocery store?’
“You’re not going to see a lot of people getting arrested,” she said. “People at this point are going to take the public health issues seriously. There may be some individuals who are going to want to push the envelope, but not many.”
Constitutional law professor Steve Schwinn said states and cities where officials have put similar orders in place have seen few issues. Supreme Court rulings have given local authorities broad powers to enforce public health measures, said Schwinn, who teaches at UIC-John Marshall Law School.
“The practical problem is, do police officers really want to be in the business, and does the city want to put them in the position of, ticketing people or arresting those who are violating a public health order?” he said. ”It cuts against our civil rights culture to do that … but legally, they would have every right to do so.”