“It’s a new normal.”
That’s how Henry County emergency director Don Ash put it when asked about how his personnel are adapting during the COVID-19 situation. As with all public safety agencies, work at the 911 center must continue uninterrupted.
“We’ve limited the number of people here,” he said. “We have a skeleton administration crew. Our emergency management people are here, and we’re working shorter days but still taking care of those EM-related needs. As for our 911 people, we have the ability to spread them out at consoles to practice social distancing, but still allow them to carry out their mission in the 911 center.”
Typically there are six to eight 911 operators on a given shift, and that has not changed. Only their spacing in the 911 center is different.
“We didn’t have to rearrange the furniture,” he said. “We just have enough consoles that we can spread them out.”
Thankfully, none of his staff has been out of work due to sickness.
“What we’re doing is practicing what everybody else is doing,” said Ash. “If we’ve got employees who are sick, we are telling them not to come to work. The five things they’re talking about, we’re doing: wash your hands often; take care when coughing; don’t touch; stay six feet apart; and stay home if you’re sick. We’re having everybody do a detailed cleaning of their work stations as they hand them off from one operator to another.”
Adjustments are being made on a much larger scale down the street at the Henry County Jail, where there are usually at least 750 inmates in residence. Constant inmate movement is a challenge, and Sheriff Keith McBrayer’s staff is making it work.
“We probably have between 1,100 and 1,200 people booked in a month, so you have a lot of people coming in and out of that facility,” he said. “We’re trying to keep the people who have been there longer isolated as best we can in those cell blocks.”
Actually, some of the safest people anywhere as far as COVID-19 are the more serious criminals at the jail, some of whom have been there for a year and a half in isolation from the outside world. But as many inmates go in and out, the usual precautions have to be taken, such as how inmates are housed due to the seriousness of their crimes.
“You can’t put an 18-year-old on a DUI charge in with someone who is there for murder or armed robbery,” said McBrayer. “You have to sort people accordingly, and we have our inmate relations people who actually do that. We have isolated a few of the areas in the jail where if we get anyone with this virus, we can house them right there until we get getter guidance as far as whether they need to go to the hospital or something of that nature.”
Some major changes have been made in how inmates are screened medically upon admission. That is a routine procedure, but now it brings with it a question of whether an inmate must be isolated or even taken somewhere else if he or she is found to have contracted the virus.
“In some situations, we try to find out if we even want to bring them in,” said the sheriff. “You can only imagine what would happen if something like this became widespread in our jail.”
Another routine situation is the transportation of inmates to other jurisdictions. When someone is apprehended in Henry County on an outstanding warrant from another county, he or she is usually taken to the Henry County Jail while arrangements are made for the other municipality’s personnel to arrange a pickup the next day.
Not any more. Now, McBrayer’s officers are looking to meet the other agency’s officials halfway, or even make the entire trip themselves, as soon as possible to keep them from coming to the jail in McDonough.
“We’re trying to prevent as many people as we can from coming to our jail, and when someone has a release date that is close we are working with the courts to try to get them out,” said McBrayer. “We are trying to free up as many beds and get as much elbow room as we can.”
As for those already in residence, there is still a need for basic services that must be conducted face-to-face. The jail serves about 2,400 meals per day, and inmates are constantly being taken to the medical department for various issues.
“There is a lot of inmate movement, but we are trying to eliminate as much of that as we can during this time,” said McBrayer.
Visitation has been suspended, along with church services and any regular educational programs such as AA. Inmates can still use the phones, and the sheriff has his staff to expand phone privileges to make up for the lack of family visits.
The overall number of bookings has decreased slightly because of the change in handling suspects from other jurisdictions and local officers are being encouraged not to bring suspects to the jail in cases that might be questionable. Deputies are only serving warrants for person-on-person crimes or violent crimes. Misdemeanor and probation violation warrants are being delayed when possible, although the sheriff knows that there will be some catching up to do when things return to normal. Warrants for failure to appear aren’t being served because court is not in session, although magistrate judges are having to issue some warrants despite the current conditions.
“I’d like to think this is all going to be done in a week or two, but we just don’t know,” said McBrayer. “The safety of my employees is my upmost concern, and I will be looking at various ways to protect them as this situation plays out.”
