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COVID19 and Policing

In the midst of a pandemic, politicians have expanded police power to enforce public health orders, diverting resources from life saving programs and increasing the risk of police violence, infection, and harm.

We are working to change that.

Nosotros Nos Mantenemos Seguros / We Keep Each Other Safe

Why track COVID19 Policing?

Across the United States, emergency “shelter in place,” “stay at home,” “social distancing,” and quarantine orders in response to the COVID19 pandemic are being enforced through aggressive policing, steep fines, criminal charges, and harsh penalties. Officers – who have some of the highest rates of infection – are violating social distancing rules to harass, ticket, and take people into custody. Even a brief encounter with an officer or short detention in a police car can dramatically increase risk of infection, and that risk increases in a holding cell or jail where people are unable to maintain social distancing and have little or no access to soap, water, and sanitizer.

Instead of offering our communities the information and support we need to stay safe, these policing tactics place individuals and communities at increased risk of violence and infection. Rather than investing resources in community organizations and building networks of support and safety, public officials are doubling down on policing and punishment, targeting communities bearing the brunt of the pandemic: Black, Indigenous and Brown communities, migrants, and other essential workers, low and no-income, unhoused, young, and disabled people. In the midst of unprecedented economic devastation and the highest rates of unemployment in our lifetimes, cities and states are imposing exorbitant fines and offering people rewards to turn in our neighbors instead of reaching out to support them.

Communities are fighting for a world where we keep ourselves and each other safe, without surveillance, policing, or punishment. We are building networks of mutual aid, sewing masks for essential workers, and documenting and calling out aggressive and abusive policing in the midst of a pandemic. This website offers tools and resources for individuals and communities to stay safe and to mobilize for what we need – instead of more cops, stops, tickets, cuffs and cells.

Report Out Now!

Read our report, UNMASKED: Impacts of Pandemic Policing (October 2020), and our newly released report update, Divesting from Pandemic Policing and Investing in a Just Recovery (May 2021).

Acknowledgments

After a year of tracking COVID-19 related public health orders and enforcement, documenting pandemic policing, and strategizing toward a just recovery, we are sunsetting the COVID19 Policing Project. We gratefully acknowledge the contributions of all of the project partners and volunteers:

ACLU, Action St. Louis, Advancement Project, BYP100, Center for Constitutional Rights, Communities United for Police Reform, Community Resource Hub for Safety & Accountability, Creative Resilience Collective, Dream Defenders, Free Radicals Collective, Health in Justice Action Lab, Interrupting Criminalization, Just Futures Law, Kilómetro Cero, Law for Black Lives, Legal Aid Society of New York, Mijente, National Lawyers Guild, People’s Parity Project, Positive Women’s Network, Tewa Women United, Thurgood Marshall Center at Howard University School of Law, Transportation Equity Caucus, and the University of Michigan Law COVID Corps.

Updates

Sign up to receive updates from the COVID19 Policing Project. Our team sends out analysis and resources in an email update every two weeks.

You can also view previous updates:

The Pandemic of Policing (PDF)

Protest and COVID-19 Policing (PDF)

Surveillance, Big Tech, and COVID-19 Criminalization (PDF)

Reproductive Justice and Mutual Accountability (PDF)

Preliminary Data Analysis and Findings (PDF)

Enforcement in Schools and Protest Policing (PDF)

Pandemic Housing Crisis and Strategy Session (PDF)

Pandemic Policing and Mask Mandates Under Biden (PDF)

Laws, Orders, and Enforcement

Wondering what orders are in place where you live? What the penalties are for violations? Who is enforcing them? What exceptions exist? What organizations to contact for help?

Check this database of emergency and public health laws in place to prevent the spread of COVID19. You can filter results by state, municipality (where separate orders exist), and mandated or prohibited activity. Click on a row to see a pop up of all the information, or just scroll to the right! To find complete relevant language from the statute or order and links to the full documents, you can download the whole database.

Public health orders continue to regularly change. You can find the most up to date information on the New York Times site. The Biden administration announced its plans to change its public health guidance and reopen most schools, businesses, and government functions by July 4th.

These databases are no longer updated or current – please visit your local municipality and state COVID19 sites for more information about current COVID19-related public health orders.

Data updated: April 24, 2021 – 1:25pm EST

COVID19 Public Health Orders


Stops, Fines & Arrests

We are building a comprehensive and secure searchable database of enforcement actions based on news reports, self-reports and reports from Cop Watch, legal, and community organizations, and Freedom of Information Requests which will be available in the coming month.

Report a stop, ticket, or arrest.

If you have been harassed, stopped, ticketed or arrested in connection with public health orders, or if you have experienced police-related increased exposure to COVID-19 during protests, let us know! This database is encrypted. Your personal information will be kept private by The Hub and we will never give it to law enforcement. We will not contact you without your consent.


Report Now

In the meantime, check out the database below for a compilation of news reports about enforcement actions. This database is mostly based on media reports and does not represent a complete collection of enforcement actions to date. By tracking incidents and emerging patterns of policing under COVID-19, we hope to provide useful information while recognizing that media reports often misrepresent the complex identities and lived realities of our communities. To report a stop, ticket, or arrest, please use the REPORT button, or email covid19policing@communityresourcehub.org. Please indicate in the subject line whether you need immediate support.

You can filter results in the enforcement tracker by date, age, race, gender, state, city, and type of enforcement – just click on a row to see a pop up of all the information in that row or scroll to the right to find the link to the original news story. If you would like to download the ENTIRE database, reset/clear all filters and “Show ‘ALL’ entries” (at the top left of the table). Then click the Excel, CSV, or PDF button to export.

Data updated: April  6, 2021 12:11pam EST

Enforcement Tracker


Resources on criminalization and COVID19

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