Columbia police work to adapt to COVID-19

COLUMBIA, Mo. (KMIZ)

The Columbia Police Department, like every other department, is being impacted by the Coronavirus pandemic.

Columbia Police Chief Geoff Jones said around 10% of the department's staff is out either quarantining or in isolation.

Under city policy, Columbia police who are showing symptoms of the virus but are not severely immunocompromised must quarantine for at least 10 days since their symptoms first appeared.

Employees with severe or critical illness must quarantine for at least 20 days since the first symptoms appeared.

In order to keep officers on the streets, they are shifting their duties. Officers on special assignments like the traffic unit or detectives are being moved to patrol.

One Columbia resident said they are not worried that the current staffing level is having a negative impact on the department's ability to respond to crimes, and they have not noticed a difference themselves.

Jones said even without shifting officers around, the virus has already slowed down some of the department's work.

"COVID has slowed down everything. Our interviews, the way that we conduct interviews, the way that we do canvases. All of those things are impacted by COVID because we're trying to reduce face to face contact," he said.

Officers are still responding to and investigating violent crimes like shootings.

As a result, the department has started taking some reports it would typically respond to online or over the phone. Those would be non life-threatening cases.

"It's probably an oversimplification. There are times that we're going to respond if it's non life-threatening, but that has to be weighed on a case by case basis," Jones said.

Jones said the department is looking at the pandemic in three tiers.

"One is just reducing services and trying to reduce the volume of things that we're responding to. Second is making some alterations to operations by pulling people out of specialty assignments and staffing patrol. And then if things got really dicey with staffing we would go to twelve-hour shifts," he said.

Jones said if it were to get to that point he would be concerned about officer fatigue.

Another Columbia resident ABC 17 News crews spoke with said he is concerned with what overtime cost a shift to 12-hour shifts would have on the department when officers are already getting plenty of overtime now.

The department would make the switch to 12-hour shifts if there were not enough officers for it to be safe or for them to cover the city.

Jones said he believes they are a long way from having to utilize mutual aid from the University of Missouri Police or the Boone County Sheriff's Department.

"We haven't had formal discussions on this topic other than we are always open to helping as we can," said Sgt. Brian Leer with the Boone County Sheriff's Department.