Police trying to stay visible amid stay at home order

In efforts to the mitigate the spread of the novel coronavirus throughout the state, Ohio Gov. Mike DeWine has issued a stay at home directive for the entire state.

Essential businesses and agencies will remain open but places that engender large public gatherings have been closed with people asked to remain in their homes if not for exercise or essential matters.

Painesville Police Chief Daniel Waterman speaks to the efforts made within his own city and how they approach the governor’s order.

“A lot of it is in regards to the local businesses, we’re asking our officers to stay super visible,” Waterman said. “We’ve reduced our enforcement activities a bit out of respect for the public. We’re trying to do what’s right, but also to stay visible because of the outside concern that we would never want to run into situations like looting or kids throwing rocks at windows, stuff like that.”

He explained that the department will uphold the stay-at-home directive but does not anticipate strong measures needed for its enforcement.

“I don’t see us taking people into custody and hauling them away on misdemeanors for being outside. We’re going to avoid that if we can. Hopefully we won’t get repeat offenders because our jail doesn’t need to be dealing with that either.

“The weather’s been a friend,” Waterman said. “No one’s been out. No one’s wanted to be out right now it’s too cold and wet. I think we’re a couple weeks away from those kinds of questions entering our minds and how we’ll address them.”

While many city government and administrative offices have closed, the essential nature of police departments requires that they remain open. The department has requested that anyone able to conduct business over the phone to do so remotely.

“We’re cleaning our station at the end of every shift,” Waterman said. “We’re cleaning our patrol cars, keyboards, and phones. It’s just been a ton of that kind of cleaning.

“We try to handle things over the phone when it’s possible because here’s the thing, safety forces, in addition to hospital workers, tend to be high risk for infection,” he added. “We can catch it a lot so we don’t want to transfer it to people either. For the residents’ safety and for our own guys, we’re trying to be smart.”

ADAM DODD — THE NEWS HERALD Painesville’s Main Street was uncharacteristically barren in the middle of the day during the ongoing stay at home directives.