With Phase 1 of the state’s re-opening set to start Friday evening, the Chapel Hill Police Department is urging the community to pause before rushing back to their old ways.
Beginning at 5 p.m., some of the restrictions issued during the COVID-19 pandemic will be lifted.
As we begin this reopening process, Chapel Hill Police Chief Chris Blue reflects on what his department operations have looked like over the past few weeks.
While some police operations may look a little different from the outside, Chief Blue said, in many ways, things aren’t very different for local law enforcement – outside of taking a few extra precautionary health measures to keep employees safe.
Some precautions include taking a higher percentage of police calls over the phone and, of course, wearing personal protective equipment when necessary.
“We’ve also been fortunate to have gotten a number of donations of personal protective equipment so we’re in pretty good shape when it comes to PPE and that gives our employees confidence that they’ll be well protected and that they can use that equipment when they need to without fear of not being able to replenish it,” Blue said.
To further stop the spread of the virus, and to allow for social distancing, the Chapel Hill Police Department has also divvied up their operations.
Blue said with a number of town facilities currently being closed for business, the police department has actually had the opportunity to split up their daily operations into three different locations. These locations include police headquarters on Martin Luther King Jr. Boulevard, the aquatics center and the public library.
This practice is and was designed to stagger employees and prioritize community health.
“Our concern was that if one of these facilities gets sick or we start getting the virus running through one shift of employees or one division that we could really find ourselves in a bad place,” Blue said. “So early on we split up our operations – which has been interesting and created some challenges, but that was an early step that I think has been helpful.”
Over the past 40-plus days, with stay-at-home orders intact, Blue said he’s really proud of how the community has followed CDC and local government’s rules and recommendations.
“When the stay-at-home orders were first issued, we anticipated perhaps a large number of violation reports and we we’re fearful that we would find ourselves having to go out and be in a position where we might have to enforce the stay-at-home orders,” Blue said. “Although our intention was never to take real enforcement action, we imagined having to go out and respond much more than we’ve had to.”
Instead, Blue said, since the initial order went into effect, the department has only seen about 20 reports where someone believed physical distancing or some other aspect of the stay-at-home order was being violated. This is something something he found pretty remarkable, considering Chapel Hill is a college community and we were nearing the end of the semester.
He said even if police did have to break up a few large gatherings, everyone has been very pleasant and cooperative – and for that he is grateful.
Outside of the few calls in regards to the stay-at-home order, Blue said the call volume as a whole has been dramatically reduced over the past few weeks.
“The first full week of March of this year we had 836 police-related 911 calls in Chapel Hill,” Blue said. “Last week we had 516 – and that’s probably up a little from the previous weeks – so that’s a pretty significant drop in activity.”
But what the force has seen a slight increase in, is not the anticipated domestic violence calls, but rather mental health calls.
“This is a stressful time for everybody and the fact of the matter is there’s an awful lot of people who are not able to get to whatever regular care that they are normally able to receive,” Blue said. “With all the stressors that everybody is experiencing right now that’s doesn’t come as a surprise.”
At the end of the day, as restrictions continue to be lifted over the course of the next few weeks and possibly months, Blue wants to encourage the community to continue to stay patient as we see out the state’s reopening process.
“We don’t know exactly what a phased recovery and re-opening looks like right now,” Blue said. “Our community has done so well with following the stay-at-home order guidelines and covering your faces and being really patient and the temptation is to try to bounce back quickly. I would just say continue to be smart, continue to be responsible, continue to think about the long-term game and look our for each other because I think we’re making great progress as a community and a state and we can’t lose that ground now.”
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