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COVID-19 Goes Parabolic Within NYPD, At Least 1,200 Have Tested Positive

COVID-19 Goes Parabolic Within NYPD, At Least 1,200 Have Tested Positive

NYPD
COVID-19 has gone parabolic within the New York Police Department. At least 1,200 NYPD staff including officers have tested positive for coronavirus. Photo by Jack Finnigan on Unsplash

New York’s police department is getting hit hard with COVID-19 cases. At least 1,200 NYPD officers and staff have tested positive for coronavirus. 

There have been five deaths within the department so far, including a custodial assistant working at police headquarters, a detective from a Harlem precinct, a school safety agent in Queens, and two NYPD administrative aides. Some 5,600 department employees called out sick on March 31. This is about five times the usual daily volume. Sick police officers accounted for roughly 15 percent of the uniformed force, Market Watch reported.

There were “thousands and thousands and thousands of calls into our sick desk yesterday,” NYPD police commissioner Dermot Shea said. “People couldn’t even get through, the lines couldn’t hold.”

“We’re assuming everyone coming into work was exposed in some way, shape or form,” Shea said.

The NYPD is the largest municipal police department in the U.S., with approximately 36,000 officers and 19,000 civilian employees, according to its website.

While the NYPD is dealing with the pandemic within its own ranks and fewer officers on the streets, crime has dropped during the coronavirus health crisis. 

“Crime has dropped off the face of the map really since the social distancing went into effect,” Shea said. “Far fewer members of the public are walking into precincts and emergency calls directed to the NYPD have declined sharply,” Shea said.

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In the week ending March 29, major crimes including felonies such as murder, rape, grand larceny, assault, and burglary were down about 24 percent across all five boroughs from the previous week and down 43 percent from the week before that, Market Watch reported.

In order to prevent more people in the agency becoming infected, a number of staff members are working from home, ABC News 7 reported.

“We’ve instituted something really unprecedented in the NYPD,” Shea said. ” … thousands of people working from home, both on uniformed and civilian sides. And that’s been going on now for weeks.”