Friday update: COVID-19 and the coronavirus has hit local law enforcement, with five Detroit Police officers testing positive for the disease, and 152 quarantined after probable exposure to the virus.
Tresa Baldas reports that Chief James Craig said he'd "never seen anything like this" at a press conference announcing the figures.
Craig noted that while he had previously modified protocol to give officers much more discretion over whether to respond to minor misdemeanors, this has not changed.
"What’s non-negotiable is misdemeanor arrests for domestic violence, criminal sexual conduct in the fourth degree and certainly felonies," Craig said. "Any inference that we are turning a blind eye to crime is totally inaccurate. Crime will not go up because we’re taking a different posture on low level misdemeanor crimes. It just will not."
Craig also said the 9th precinct was hit particularly hard, "due to an event that was held there, involving a person who attended the attend who did not show symptoms at the time but has since fallen ill."
Original article:
Local law enforcement is starting to feel the coronavirus impact.
Three Detroit cops have tested positive, and 80 members of the department are out of commission in quarantine, George Hunter of The Detroit News reports, citing two unnamed police sources.
The news comes on the same day Deadline Detroit reported that one Wayne County Sheriff's deputy tested positive and three others await test results.
Quarantined Detroit Police force members are uniformed officers, the paper says. Some are ordered to stay home because they'd been in contact with the infected officers and others self-quarantined.
