As a leader of law enforcement or security organizations (large or small), you must figure out how to provide services and protect lives and property in the face of this pandemic. You provide services 24 hours a day, seven days a week.  You are required to respond and interact with people. In emergencies, your personnel may not be able to protect themselves from exposure to COVID-19.

In this guide, we will outline how COVID-19 is likely to directly and indirectly impact your organization. We will also describe mitigation strategies which can help you manage your personnel, deliver services, and reduce the problems you will be facing over the next few months.

This information is drawn from my experience studying the impact of HIV/AIDS on law enforcement and working with police organizations to mitigate the effects of health crises on police personnel and their ability to provide services. More on my experiences is outlined in the next section.

Countries throughout the world are coming to grips with the COVID-19 pandemic. They are grappling not only with the public health implications, but also it’s impact on the economy and social order.  While the COVID-19 pandemic is unprecedented in modern times, lessons can be drawn from how other health crises have impacted law enforcement organizations.

The impact of COVID-19 will be compounding. Each of your personnel who gets sick will be less productive, increasing the strain on the organization and reducing your organization’s ability to provide services. As more of your staff get sick, the workload will increase, productivity is likely to decrease, all in the face of increased demand for your services.

Frankly speaking, you will be getting hit from all directions at once.

The good thing is that your personnel that get infected with COVID-19 will likely recover and come back to work. This is manageable. With careful planning, you can help your personnel and organization, prepare, and whether this crisis.  

My Background

Before continuing, let me tell you a little bit about myself. I am a criminologist, managed a crime analysis unit for a city police department, conducted research for the Federal government (DoD, DHS, and DOJ), and now I am the Director of R&D for Second Sight Training Systems.

The focus of my doctoral research was studying the impact of HIV/AIDS on police services in Southern Africa. After completing my doctorate, I had the opportunity to work with researchers based in South Africa and study the impact of HIV/AIDs on the Lesotho Mounted Police Services. Lesotho is a small, landlocked country nested inside South Africa. Around that time, they had national HIV prevalence rates of 15-20%. We expected it was higher among the police.

We spent time visiting police stations throughout Lesotho, talking to police officers about their experiences, and, eventually, drafted an HIV/AIDS policy that was put into law. In the long run, and working in partnership with a variety of international partners, we were able to get an HIV/AIDS treatment facility established for the LMPS to help them provide services in the face of this disease.

The information outlined in this guide is drawn not only from my experience studying the impact of HIV/AIDS on law enforcement and working with police organizations, but also from available research studying the impact of HIV/AIDS on police, military, security, civil service, and health care organizations in southern Africa. I have included some relevant references, research, and citations in the reference section.

Why can we learn from law enforcement organizations dealing with HIV/AIDS in southern Africa?

Because these organizations were facing very high levels of infection (in many cases 15-20%) and dealing with the compounding impact of absenteeism, productivity losses, and mortality on their organization in the face of more complex demand for services. I recognize it is not a perfect fit, but we can learn from it.

Long Versus Short Wave Events

We need to think about this epidemic as a long wave event. Something that occurs over time and that will play out over months and, perhaps, years. There is a difference between what we are facing with COVID-19 and other natural disasters.  Natural disasters (hurricanes, tornadoes, blizzards) happen all at once. They are sudden. Do not impact everywhere.  After they arrive, we can clean up and, as a society, draw resources from unaffected areas.

COVID-19 for individuals is not a long wave event. We are still learning about COVID-19. We are still working on ways to track, prevent, or cure the disease. We know people can get sick in days or weeks of exposure. Not everyone will get infected at the same time. People will vary in their symptoms and the severity of the impact of the disease on their health. However, people will get sick, get better, and then can come back to work.

But, COVID-19 is a long wave event for organizations, communities, states, and nations. Your personnel will get sick at different times, in different ways, while you are trying to provide services. These will create multiple pressures on your staff and your organization.

We can draw lessons from HIV/AIDS because it is a slow virus; meaning there is a prolonged onset between initial infection and severe illness. People can go for years without showing symptoms. Often they don’t’ know they are sick right away. Things don’t happen all at once; negative effects build over time.

Supply and Demand: 3 Types of Effects

We need to think about the impact of COVID-19 on your personnel and organization in terms of supply and demand. These adverse effects of COVID-19 will most likely impact officers and your ability to provide services (e.g., supply).

As of yet, we don’t know how it will affect the demand for your organization’s services. We can hope demand will go down. But, if your demand for services goes up in the face of reduced supply, it may lessen your ability to meet demand.

There are three effects COVID-19 is likely to have on your organization – environmental effects, direct effects, and indirect effects.

Take a quick look at this illustration, then please keep reading.  I apologize in advance if some of these illustrations are a bit primitive!

We separate out these different types of effects because they help us to identify how organizations are likely to be affected by Covid-19 and what you can do to limit specific impacts.

Environmental Effects: Changes in level and type of demand for services due to the pandemic. These are unrelated to infected personnel and may impact the quantity and type of service your organization is asked to deliver.

Direct Effects: Illness-driven absenteeism, reduced productivity, and mortality of personnel. Direct effects are driven by infection and subsequent illness-driven absenteeism.

Indirect Effects: The effects of Covid-related absenteeism, productivity losses, mortality (direct effects), and changes in demand (environmental effects) have on your operations and ability to provide services. There are short term and long term-indirect effects.

A Deeper Dive Into These Effects

These environmental, direct, and indirect effects are likely to manifest themselves in a variety of ways. Take a quick look at this video and then keep reading. Don’t worry, much of the information is outlined below the video too.

Please note that there is no audio on any videos in this post.

Environmental Effects

1. Increased Demand: Calls, crime, disorder, or requests for service may increase.

2. Change in Demand: Your organization may be asked to provide a different type of service than it normally provides. This could include medical transport, increased patrols, checkpoint management, or imposing required curfews or quarantines.

3. Reduced Budget: Resources devoted to healthcare may reduce your available funds to provide services.

Potential Direct Effects

1. Exposure at Work: Due to the nature of the transmission of Covid-19, your officers may become exposed while providing services.

2. Expose Others: Infected officers may also transmit the virus unknowingly to co-workers or the community.

3. Fear of Exposure: Fear of exposure may cause officers to change how and to whom they provide services. (this will likely be exacerbated if inadequate PPE is available). Some personnel may not come into work due to fear of exposure.  

4. Increased Absenteeism: Personnel will get sick and not come into work. Some may also not come into work to take care of family members.  

5. Productivity Reductions: Reduced productivity by officers who are sick.

6. Emotional Trauma: Your officers will be dealing with the increased psychological strain of seeing co-workers, friends, and family who are sick and dying.

7. Mortality: Your officers may die from their infection.

potential Indirect Effects

Short Term:

1. Reduced Ability to Deliver Services: Fewer available personnel may cause delays or an inability to meet the demand for your services.

2. Health Care Costs: Your healthcare-related costs to pay for illness, absenteeism, or death may increase.

3. HR Management Burden: Your managers and supervisors may spend more time dealing with absenteeism and illness and less providing services.

4. Funeral Attendance: LE and security organizations are bound by comradery; they want to attend the funerals of their co-workers.  High levels of sickness and death are likely to result in more funerals among your personnel, and more funerals and absenteeism by your officers to attend those funerals.

5. Delayed Investigations: Reduced number of personnel may increase the amount of time it takes to investigate or make an arrest for crimes.

6. Reduced Supervisor Capacity: Illness and absenteeism of supervisors and managers will reduce your organization's ability to manage and monitor personnel.

7. Loss of Discipline and Professionalism: Personnel facing increased demand for services, emotional trauma, illness, and reduced supervision may reduce the quality of the service they provide. This may be exacerbated by illness among supervisors and management.

8. Productivity Reductions: With fewer personnel available to provide services and unchanged or increased demand, there will likely be a reduction in productivity. Productivity may also decrease because your personnel are taking adequate preventive measures (e.g., things take longer) to keep themselves from getting sick. Uncompensated overtime might cause intentional slowdowns over long periods. (Yes productivity reductions are both direct and indirect).

9. Inefficiency Based on Changed Demand: Depending on the nature of the changing demand for services, you may not have the capacity available when and where you need it—resulting in some personnel doing less while others are overburdened.

10. Public Reaction to Reduced Service Delivery: Changes in the quality or quantity of police service is likely to cause a negative reaction from your community.

 Long Term:

1. Loss of Institutional Knowledge:  When you personnel get sick and die, you will lose the institutional knowledge that they have developed throughout their career.

2. Training Costs: Replacing staff who are ill and don’t return to work could increase your training and recruitment costs over the long term.

3. Competition For Your Skilled Personnel: You may lose skilled personnel to other organizations who can pay them higher wages or offer more advantageous working conditions.

As an organization, your ability to fulfill all missions will likely decrease in the face of multiple and combined pressures of exposure, transmission, changes or increased demand for services, reduced resources, and productivity reductions.

Mitigation Strategies

Experienced personnel are a resource. It can take years to build up the knowledge necessary to do this type of work. Your organization is also constrained by local and state law, contracts, and collective bargaining agreements, which could impact your ability to institute specific policies or practices. 

Recognizing your potential constraints, there is a variety of measures that you could put in place to mitigate the combined direct, indirect, and environmental effects of COVID-19. These measures may not need to be instituted immediately, but can be incorporated into your planning and policies over time.

These strategies are split into two parts to help you review the information. Take a minute and watch this video, and then please keep reading. Some of the information is also outlined below the video.

Part I:

Now, let’s try and take a deeper dive into these first five strategies.

1. Reduce Organizational Goals: Recognize that it may not be possible to meet all your prior organizational goals. You can reduce your goals to ensure they can be met in the face of increased absenteeism, productivity losses, and mortality. You should also make sure everyone (your personnel and community) understand the limited goals.

2. Identify Critical Positions: Identify positions where absenteeism and mortality could cause disproportionate harm to the ability of your organization to provide services. When those positions have been identified, train staff for those positions now so they can support when needed.

3. Reduce Administrative Functions: Shift experienced personnel away from administrative work to service delivery. This shift may not need to occur immediately, but planning may increase your supply of available staff when needed.  

4. Simplification of Operations and Structure: Make more positions redundant; train supervisors and managers to meet those simplified operations now and learn from those who are currently doing the work.

5. Demand Monitoring: Leverage available analytical capability to measure demand for services and rapidly adjust staffing based on changing demand.

Part II:

6. Provide Adequate Personal Protective Equipment (PPE) and Increase Officer Knowledge: Making sure your officers have enough PPE, know how to use it, and understand how the disease is transmitted; This may reduce the chance of infection, the chance of transmission, and increase morale and productivity.

7. Quick Access to Testing & Care: Personnel will likely be exposed to Covid-19 during their duties. Providing quick access to testing will enable them to return to duty quicker if uninfected and self-quarantine if infected and avoid transmitting to others.

8. Leverage Quarantined Officers for Administrative Duties: Officers may be quarantined due to exposure, but may not be sick. Allow these officers to take reports over the phone or handle other administrative or investigative functions while quarantined.

9. Burden Shifting: Take certain tasks that your personnel had done before and “contract out” those tasks to others.

10. Purposed Deskilling: At present, certain jobs may require levels of specific training or experience. Some tasks or duties can be deskilled, meaning they could be completed by less skilled personnel.

Not planning for a reduced ability to meet goals, respond to demand, or the loss of critical personnel will leave you in a bad position. Your organization may not deliver the services you need it to. You may inefficiently use available resources. You may be inappropriately responding to demand. You could be losing productivity due to a lack of PPE and testing, or deskilling jobs unintentionally.

Implementation of policies and practices similar to those outlined above may not be necessary right away, or at all. However, developing appropriate plans and ensuring staff are trained for critical tasks essential to maintaining service delivery in the face of absenteeism, productivity losses, and mortality.  

Development of a COVID-19 Policy

You may consider crafting a policy related to the unique effects that COVID-19 may have on demand for services, personnel, and service delivery. Workplace policies are a tool you and your personnel can use mitigate the impact this disease may have on the performance of staff and the ability of your organization to deliver services. 

Policies also provide guidance for how to support personnel who become infected and absent or die of the virus.

The policy should cover the following topics:

1. Provision of Personal Protective Equipment (Gloves, Masks, etc.).

2. Refusal to provide services due to inadequate PPE or serious risk of exposure.

3. Provision of training and information to prevent infection.  

4. Procedures in event of potential exposure during the course of duties.

5. Provision of access to testing and treatment for personnel.

6. Provision of access to testing and treatment for the family of personnel.  

7. Confidentiality regarding infection status.

8. Use of compensatory, sick, or personal leave due to illness or infection status.

9. Long-term support of personnel infected and unable to return to duty.

10. Protections for dismissal from Covid-related illness.   

11. Compensation for being infected while providing services.

12. Disciplinary, grievance, and complaint procedures for Covid-19 policy-related issues.

These police topics referenced are similar to those we incorporated into the HIV/AIDS policy for the Lesotho Mounted Police Services. They were designed to increase protection from infection, increase officer morale, and maintain the ability of the organization to provide services.

Establishing policies and procedures will help instill the confidence of your officers and your community in your and your organization. Your supervisors and managers will know how to react to situations, and your community will understand how you plan on maintaining services in the face of the COVID-19 pandemic.

Some Caveats

Organizations also vary in their size, structure, and the skill set of their personnel. Some of these effects and mitigation strategies may not be relevant or possible for you. Frankly, I hope these things don’t happen and you don’t need to change your service delivery due to losses among your personnel.

We also can’t capture all the possible effects here. As we learn more about COVID-19 some of these recommendations may become irrelevant. As a leader armed with the right information, you can make good decisions for your personnel, organization, and community.

Conclusion

These effects and mitigation strategies can help you make decisions, plan, and implement policies to manage your personnel, deliver services, and reduce the problems you will be facing over the next few months.

Take the time and plan for the potential direct, indirect, and environmental effects of COVID-19 on your organization. Having a plan in place will allow you to better manage the change which will likely impact all of us and increase the confidence of your officers and community during this time of crisis.

We all hope that the COVID-19 is not severe. We hope our hospital system can handle it. We hope people will take precautions to reduce the spread of infection. But we cannot guarantee it and you know how important planning is. Stay safe and good luck.