PEORIA, Ill. — Peoria-area leaders have been meeting this week with representatives of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
The CDC spent Wednesday conducting COVID-19 seminars with Peoria County Sheriff Brian Asbell and Peoria Police Department Chief Loren Marion.
The sheriff said the CDC reps have been touring the country to meet with various municipalities and their respective law enforcement agencies, health departments, and economic councils.
“It was very interesting. This was a panel that lasted several hours, and they were on the ground here, plus there was a teleconference into D.C. and Atlanta and there was a series of questions that led to more questions,” said Asbell.
“From a law enforcement perspective, they were really looking at enforcement practices. What worked, what are you seeing, insomuch in asking about the staffs’ welfare and how they’ve been managing this and the complcations. The good, the bad, and the ugly.”
Asbell said a big focal point of the meeting revolved around a late July outbreak at the Peoria County Jail, when 39 detainees and seven employees tested positive for the virus.
“There was a lot of questions in relation to how we managed, how we continue to manage, and what procedures we’ve put into place to try to prevent it from happening again. It was a very open conversation,” he said.
“You identify weak points. A lot of it circled back just to the relationship we do have with the [Peoria City/County] Health Department, even before this pandemic started and the communication and the team environment.
“They were pretty much complimentary on a lot of the procedures we’ve had in place, where this could be a model for some best practices for other agencies to be replicated throughout the nation.”
Asbell said none of the conversation revolved around the CDC’s Wednesday announcement the agency hopes to have a vaccine ready by early November.
“I think either me or Chief made a joke about it, [but] there were no specifics in relation to any of that,” he said.
Asbell said the CDC was open to feedback about what it can do for local law enforcement.
“I didn’t really have a good [answer] for them, besides writing us a check,” he joked.
“I brought up the lack of consistency. I think that’s kind of been a lot of people’s problem, with some of the directions and I do understand this is a fluid environment and things change everyday, but I just acknowledged you put a plan in place, and then three days later, the rules change, and that complicates things.”
As for what he hopes comes out of the meeting, Asbell said he is interested to see the CDC’s final report, after it’s done with its meetings.
“If you have some standard operating procedures that work at other communities or law enforcement agencies, that will help us in the future to build policies and training, so there will be some good out of this,” he said.
“It’s almost like an after-action review. Anytime you do an after-action review, you’re doing a complete autopsy of everything that happened from start to finish during any incident, and you want to identify what you can do better,” he explained.
“If we’re still dealing with this three months down the road, and this report comes out and we get feedback to try this or this, that’s what we want to know. We do want to do everything we can to give the services to the members of our community, but also have the best response to hopefully get through this.”
The full interview with Asbell here:
