Spooky. I hope they have some type of plan in place to divide and isolate their divisions moving forward, so the entire police force doesn’t end up sick down the road.
A friend of a friend on another site has a buddy who runs 4 police divisions. He said that’s what they did there. His buddy went out and found 4 separate office spaces for each of the 4 divisions he runs. Normally they were all packed into 1 building, so if 1 guy got sick he was scared it could infect all 4 divisions and take out much of that city’s police force.
Smart!
I can't speak to what the Buffalo Police are doing. I'm with Buffalo Fire and we've had a series of orders come from our Commissioner on Covid-19.
-If off duty and experiencing possible Covid-19 symptoms we are allowed to go off on administrative leave for 48hrs. With how our schedule works 24on/24off/24on/5days off, that gives a decent amount of time to sort out if you have covid19.
-We have daily monitoring at the start (0800hrs) and middle (2000hrs) of every shift handled by the company officers (Captains/LTs). Checking for symptoms of new fever, new cough and new shortness of breath. We will also be monitoring temperatures. All these reports are immediately passed on to our Battalion Chief and/or Division Chief.
-If member show signs/symptoms of Covid-19. They're to put on a mask and the officer notifies Battalion to arrange for the member to be sent home. Then have their spot filled in.
- There will be one specified entrance point for each firehouse where everyone will come in and out. No one is allowed in firehouse other than the crew working. Officers are responsible for making sure this is adhered to.
- Responding to Covid-19 calls will adhere to the 2in/2out rule. If the 2 handling the call has their gear contaminated the 2 outside can decon their gear on site. Unless its something considered a "gross contamination". Then the gear is bagged in hazmat decon bags, sealed and sent down for decon/cleaning.
There are also a few changes to various response protocols as well, like wearing a N95 mask when working on someone in cardiac arrest.
That's a rough outline of it. Its been fluid with updates as we've gone along.
EDIT: Not sure how long our supplies will last. I know the FDNY Commissioner said they are about 2 weeks away from running out of masks and other supplies. But they have the added burden of an ambulance division which would put an enormous strain on supplies in a situation like this
