They make close-quarter arrests in a time of social distancing. They rush those sickened with the coronavirus to the hospital. They are responsible for guarding inmates in jails with covid-19 outbreaks.
In Virginia, the Fairfax County sheriff had declined to say whether any of her deputies tested positive after a coronavirus outbreak at the jail — until changing course this week. Alexandria and Arlington won’t disclose whether their employees, including firefighters and police officers, are sick with covid-19, the disease caused by the coronavirus.
Philadelphia has rebuffed requests for case tallies among its thousands of police officers and firefighters, despite a rising chorus of concerns, and Columbus, Ohio, stopped releasing such figures at the end of March.
Officials cite a range of considerations, from worker privacy to avoiding creating panic, but an increasing number of critics say the lack of information could be putting the public and public safety workers at risk and is eroding trust in the agencies.
Dave Statter, a former TV journalist who advises public safety agencies on communications, said departments could release the number of workers with covid-19 without violating anyone’s privacy, as many agencies are already doing.
Statter said they have a duty to do so since these workers are coming into contact with the public in ways that could spread a contagious disease. He said they are also missing an opportunity to educate about the dangers these workers face.
“The public — that’s who you serve — they should know what’s going on in the public safety agencies, particularly at a time of a crisis, like this pandemic,” Statter said. “The public does interact with you. They want to know, if you have people infected, how you are dealing with it. And most are dealing with it responsibly.”
But cities and public service agencies said they have to walk a careful line between informing the public and protecting sensitive health information about employees.
Philadelphia Managing Director Brian Abernathy said releasing the data might chill doctors’ willingness to report such information to the city and impede its ability to manage outbreaks.
“Even in these challenging times, people — public servants included — have rights to privacy and confidentiality,” Abernathy said last week. “If we reported the number of police officers with this infection, you’d want to know what unit they were in. If we reported the number of firefighters with this infection, you’d want to know what station house.”
Some officials in public safety unions have pushed back on that stance, saying that they want the public to understand what these workers are facing and that they want their own members to have a sense of how many are infected, so they can make informed safety judgments.
All agencies interviewed for this report said they were taking steps to quarantine sick workers, trace their contacts and isolate other employees with potential exposure. Each also said that it would inform employees and members of the public who were directly exposed to an infected worker but that broader tallies were problematic.
Officials in Arlington and Alexandria said there was no need to inform the public about cases at the police and fire departments, unless there were so many illnesses it began to affect operations. That hasn’t happened so far.
“If the public need to know is there, they will know,” said Craig Fifer, a spokesman for the city of Alexandria.
Fifer noted, for example, that the city announced in March that a person at Murphy’s Irish Pub had tested positive, because there was no way to privately determine who else had been at the bar.
But right now, Fifer said that tracking individual cases in city government would be a “difficult thing to do in a consistent and meaningful way,” and that reporting only the city’s overall daily tally “is the best balance between public safety and private health.”
Jail officials in both Arlington and Alexandria said they intend to provide information about positive cases among inmates and workers. As of Friday, neither had any.
Fairfax County Sheriff Stacey Kincaid announced in late March that a jail inmate had tested positive for the coronavirus, but she initially refused to disclose the results of tests on at least two members of her staff who worked there. Kincaid cited privacy concerns.
Kincaid’s spokesman said the sheriff’s office would inform any inmates who came in contact with infected sheriff’s deputies and conduct contact tracing. The office said it would begin informing the public about positive cases among deputies after questions from The Washington Post this week. Five deputies have tested positive for the coronavirus, the Fairfax Sheriff’s Office said Friday.
The initial lack of transparency troubled Fairfax County’s public defender, who has numerous clients at the jail. Speaking before the policy change, Dawn Butorac said the sheriff should be making broader announcements about positive cases for the safety of inmates. There have been four coronavirus cases at the jail among inmates.
“The deputy probably can’t list every inmate they have had contact with but the inmate can probably remember what deputy they had contact with,” Butorac wrote in an email. “I think it is the only way that we can quarantine and test those that could be infected.”
No one tracks how many public service agencies across the nation are withholding information about coronavirus cases among their workers, but a survey of local police and fire departments and jails shows most have said they would inform the public about positive tests.
That includes police and fire departments in Montgomery and Prince George’s counties in Maryland, as well as the police and fire departments in Loudoun and Fairfax counties in Virginia. A spokesman for the Prince William County police said the agency has not had any cases, but any “release of such information would depend on the nature of how the member potentially contracted the virus and their potential community exposure on a case-by-case basis.”
Statter pointed to Washington as a model for openness.
The District did not report two early cases in its fire department but then shifted to a policy of providing detailed information. The city has a website that lists coronavirus cases, the number of workers tested and quarantined, and other data for all of its public service agencies.
D.C. authorities said that during the pandemic, the public has a right to know the medical status of its first responders and other law enforcement officials, including corrections officers and inmates at the D.C. jail, where one inmate has died of covid-19.
“We made the decision to release our data broadly to ensure transparency with our residents,” Mayor Muriel E. Bowser (D) said in a statement. “In order for everyone to understand the urgency in flattening the curve, we felt it important that our residents know where we are. We’re all in this together, and the more information we can share, the more informed we can all be in our daily routines.”
Dan Morse contributed to this report.
