Policing has become a different challenge for Syracuse Police officers during the coronavirus pandemic. Shelter-in-place orders and closures of schools and businesses have resulted in reduced crime. But Police Chief Kenton Buckner has some other concerns.
Crime has dropped for three consecutive weeks in the city of Syracuse. And Chief Buckner says when officers do respond to calls, they’re taking extra health precautions.
“So we’re reducing the number of calls that we respond to. And when we do respond, we’ll ask the public to step out if that’s appropriate. But in some examples we do have to make physical arrests. When we do, we’ll put on the appropriate equipment to do so and we’re also decontaminating our vehicles after transport.”
Coincidently, the department had just started to test Tele-serve and E-serve, phone and online response to less-serious calls, in order to free up officers for more substantive work. Buckner says while overall calls are down, there have been commercial burglaries and several shootings over the past week to investigate. But one other type of call is really bothering him.
“We still feel like we’re making far too many calls for people who are illegally or ignoring the emergency order put in place by our Governor. And we still are making far too many calls trying to educate awareness and suggest to people that they not congregate and gather in public.”
When police do respond to these illegal or unhealthy gatherings, they want to do so with awareness and education. And when officers break up a group, Buckner has them do it as hands-off as possible so as not to spread the pandemic.
On a personal level, he says he’s concerned about his elderly mother, but otherwise managing the isolation pretty well … with one nagging concern.
“The other thing that keeps me up at night is, I don’t want something to happen to one of our officers to where they test positive or they end up taking something home to their family members. Those are the things that keep me up at night.”
He shared that he’s gotten calls and texts from members of the public, thanking officers for staying on the job. To that end, Buckner notes very few have called in sick … they’ve only had to test about a dozen officers with no positive cases … though some did stay home to monitor symptoms.
His advice, keep heeding medical and government leaders’ calls to stay home … and beware the scams that are out there trying to exploit the crisis by tricking you out of money or personal information.
