New Role for New York Police: Breaking Up Crowds at Trader Joe's

“I’ve lived in the city my whole life, I’ve never imagined this,” Rosso said. “It’s very surreal.”

This is law enforcement in the age of a pandemic. Rosso and his partner, Officer Nicholas Contardo, are members of a 708-member task force that has been drawn from other duties to enforce social-distancing rules intended to stem the spread of the coronavirus.

The epidemic has affected almost every aspect of policing in the nation’s biggest city. Violent crime has dropped precipitously. Patrol officers find themselves reassigned to act as public health police of sorts, warning people not to socialize. Detectives are responding to a growing number of calls to investigate deaths at home; they wear Tyvek suits, gloves, masks and face shields to prevent exposure to the virus.

Rank and file officers are carrying surgical masks and latex gloves along with their usual pistols, Mace and handcuffs. And officers of every rank worry that mundane arrests, interviews and other interactions with people — activities they used to do without a thought — might lead to infection.

“You’re always concerned when you’re making an arrest — what somebody may have, if you’re going to catch it,” said one patrol officer in Brooklyn, who asked not to be identified because he was not authorized to give interviews. “Now it’s more so. But you have to do your job.”

The changes wrought by the epidemic are evident in the additional supplies needed to patrol a city that has become the face of the nation’s health crisis. Last week, on Thursday alone, the department delivered to precinct station houses 28,000 N95 face masks, 53,000 surgical masks and 19,000 pairs of gloves, the police said.

As millions of New Yorkers follow orders to shelter in place, major crimes have dropped steeply in the last month, easing some pressure on the police. In the last four weeks, homicides dropped by 20%, for instance, and reported rapes by 45%, compared with the same period last year.

But as crime has ebbed, police officers find themselves engaged in a very different fight against a microscopic threat that makes every interaction with the public dangerous to their health.

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‘It’s a silent bullet.’

Nearly 20% of the 36,000-member police force has called in sick since the virus began taking a toll in the department. At least 20 department employees, including two detectives and a police officer, have died from COVID-19.

“It’s a silent bullet,” said Paul DiGiacomo, the president of the Detectives Endowment Association, which represents 5,500 detectives.

Commissioner Dermot F. Shea has vowed the department will prevail in what he has called “the fight of a generation.” He has pointed out that since the crisis started in mid-March, about 600 police officers have returned to their assignments after recovering from the virus.

“When this thing started, people talked about well maybe this the flu,” Shea said on Twitter on Friday. “This is not the flu.”

To attack the virus, Inspector Marlon Larin said the department has mobilized the Citywide All-Out Task Force, which is usually assembled to flood high-crime areas and other assignments. “It’s something we’ve already been doing,” he said. “Just not this scale, on this magnitude and for this reason.”

The commanding officer of the task force, Chief Raymond Spinella, said his officers are also being asked to shore up patrols in precincts where numerous officers have called in sick.

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‘Make no mistake. You are saving lives.’

On a recent morning, Rosso and Contardo mustered with about 30 other officers assigned to enforce social-distancing rules in the courtyard of the department’s former police academy in Gramercy Park. They all wore blue-green surgical masks and stood well apart from each other, eyes focused on their commander, Deputy Chief Edward Winski.

“There is no cure for the coronavirus,” Winski said. “There is no vaccine. So right now the only tool we have to deal with it is mitigation. Mitigation, mitigation, mitigation. What does that mean? Social distancing. Wash your hands. Six feet apart.”

Winski said he understood that the assignment seemed bizarre. “If you had told me three or four weeks ago that we were going to go around the parks and tell people to stand apart, social distancing, I would not even know what that meant,” the chief said. “Make no mistake. You are saving lives.”

As Rosso and Contardo started their shift, they sprayed a disinfectant in their police cruiser and vigorously scrubbed the panels, wheel and seats with towels. “We have to make sure it’s clean,” the sergeant said.

Police cruisers began to move out, their lights on, responding to calls of overcrowding at stores, parks, subways and even elevators.

Contardo said he was already thinking ahead to when his shift would end. Each night, he said, he wondered if he would bring the virus home to his wife and three young children in Massapequa, Long Island. He has been obsessed with every cough or itch in his throat.

“You think, ‘Is this a symptom?’” he said. “You worry.”

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Every night, he said, as soon as he gets home, he takes a shower and changes clothes before hugging his children. “My kids are young, so they don’t always understand,” he said. “But you’ve got to do what you’ve got to do.”

Rosso said he worries about infecting his fiancée. “We know it’s part of our job,” he said. “You don’t want to put others in danger.”

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Supermarkets and parks are hot spots

Supermarkets have become trouble spots, the officers say, as people tend to crowd together in their eagerness to get their hands on food and supplies. An hour into their shift, the officers responded to a second report of a crowd gathered at a Trader Joe’s a few blocks east on 14th Street.

When the officers arrived, they found a store employee with a face mask trying to manage a wayward line of frustrated people that extended the length of a city block. The police got out of their patrol car to make their presence known, and people moved apart.

“If you are not wearing a face covering, you will not be able to get in!” the employee yelled.

Most people in the line had a mask or cloth over their faces. But Paulina Ferrari, 21, a college student originally from San Diego, forgot a face covering. “This is not something we are used to thinking,” she said.

“Can you pull your shirt up over your face while you shop?” the employee asked. “Yes,” Ferrari replied.

Rosso and Contardo watched from several feet away, pleased that their presence seemed to be enough to compel people to follow rules. Still, Rosso said with a chuckle, it would be even better if crowds dispersed without the police having to be called.

Gov. Andrew Cuomo, who has lectured city residents about avoiding playing sports or gathering in parks, announced fines of up to $1,000 on New Yorkers who defy the authorities.

But relatively few summonses have been issued — only 76 since March 17. One day last week officers checked on 2,178 supermarkets, 6,907 bars and restaurants and 1,119 public spaces. No summonses were issued, the police said.

There have been notable exemptions. The police have broken up a handful of funerals in Jewish Orthodox enclaves in Brooklyn, which often draw large crowds.

“I realize that everyone wants to pay their respects, but at this point in time, we really have to control the disease,” said Inspector Georgios Mastrokostas, a supervisor on the task force.

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About 15 people who have defied the rules have been arrested. On March 28, for instance, the police responded to reports of an illegal bar in Brooklyn, where a dozen people were drinking and gambling, and charged the operator with reckless endangerment, the police said.

“It’s a heavy hit if you are not complying,” said Mastrokostas.

With Trader Joe’s under control, the officers headed to another known hot spot — a park at the corner of 36th Street and Second Avenue. Two weeks ago the state government shut down the city’s playgrounds to slow the spread of the coronavirus.

Metal gates had been closed to prevent people from entering the playground. A sign was posted that read: “Please exercise alone and use social distancing.”

A lone man was doing push-ups at one end of the park, and a father and son were throwing a baseball back and forth on the opposite end. In the middle, a 4-year-old named Augustus, wearing a thick white helmet, was riding his scooter. A few steps away, his father said he had made a game of washing hands with his son, telling the boy, “It’s a bad cold, a bad flu.”

“The magnitude of it? I don’t think he understands,” the father said. “To be honest, I don’t think I understand either.”

Next the officers went to check on the Hookah Plus lounge on West 27th Street, where the previous day they had found five customers smoking inside. They had closed the place and had given the owner a lecture. Today, the gates were shut. “It makes me happy he complied,” Rosso said.

Their phone screens came alive again. Someone had reported a cluster of people outside Peter McManus Cafe on Seventh Avenue in Chelsea. By the time the officers arrived, only one man was standing by the door, waiting for his food order.

Rosso told an employee, Lawrence Jansen, 42, not to allow people to gather and eat outside the premises. “I’m giving you a warning,” he said.

Jansen promised to make sure customers did not linger. People coming for takeout orders sometimes stick around instead of going straight home, he explained. “I feel like they want to stay and be social. Obviously, that can’t happen,” he said. “It is kind of hard to police it.”

This article originally appeared in The New York Times .