City police are limiting face-to-face reactions as much as they can during virus threat
By JEREMY APPEL on March 14, 2020.
jappel@medicinehatnews.com@MHNJeremyAppel The Medicine Hat Police Service is looking at reducing face-to-face interactions between officers and the public wherever possible as a result of the COVID-19 outbreak, according to chief Andy McGrogan. “Our goals are, like everybody’s, to slow the spread of the virus, and protect the health and safety of first responders, employees and members of our community,” he said. “While we’re doing that, we need to maintain continuity of public safety.” McGrogan says all MHPS members received a memo outlining these priorities. “We are looking at how we can reposition our operational resources to ensure that, depending on how hard we may be hit with this virus, we may be able to respond to calls for service that require our immediate attention,” he said. This means police will “triage some calls” to determine which must be dealt with in person and which can be handled over the phone or online, said McGrogan. The MHPS will have a new “call centre” up and running by Monday, which will be separate from dispatch and determine those “we absolutely must respond to” and those that can be handled alternatively, he said. McGrogan likened police’s role as an essential service to hockey referees. “We need to be there to ensure public safety, and in order to do that we need to stay as healthy as we can,” he said. The chief says they’re working to create a healthy distance between prisoners in the station’s 23 cells. “We’ve got quite a bit of room back there,” McGrogan said. “We’re going to do things like making sure our prisoners are well-spaced, that our contact with the prisoners is limited to when contact is required. All the normal things that you’d think we’d do.” 12-11
