Collected Item: “Policing the Plague”
Give your story a title.
Policing the Plague
What sort of object is this: text story, photograph, video, audio interview, screenshot, drawing, meme, etc.?
Photograph, taken personally
Tell us a story; share your experience. Describe what the object or story you've uploaded says about the pandemic, and/or why what you've submitted is important to you.
This is a photograph of myself that I took just prior to the service of a search warrant on March 21st 2020 in Salinas, California. The state of California was the first to issue a statewide lock down order due to COVID-19 and had done so just the day before on March 20th. Officers in my department were required to don our gas masks for the service of search warrants and other specific activities at this time due to concerns of contacting the virus. These specific gas masks are issued to be used in environments in which CS or CN gas is introduced. They are also designed to be effective in nuclear fallout and are subsequently extreme overkill in regards to protection against COVID-19 and additionally utterly unpractical for officers whom work 40 plus hours a week. The requirement to wear these masks was very short lived as we soon downgraded to surgical masks and cloth masks. Nonetheless, this exemplifies the fear that has surrounded COVID-19, especially in the early days of the pandemic, and the often drastic reactions we as a society have had in response.
Use one-word hashtags (separated by commas) to describe your story. For example: Where did it originate? How does this object make you feel? How does this object relate to the pandemic?
#Police, #Salinas, #California, #Masks,
Who originally created this object? (If you created this object, such as photo, then put "self" here.)
Jeffrey Arensdorf
Give this story a date.
2020-03-21