ST. CLAIRSVILLE — Some people find it uncomfortable to wear a mask to guard against spreading COVID-19 but for police officers, those masks can pose other types of challenges.

Glenn Moore, president of Belmont Monroe FOP Lodge 6, said it can be more difficult to identify a suspect, especially on video, when they are wearing a mask. It also can be more difficult for an officer who is wearing a mask to communicate with certain individuals.

Arresting a suspect who claims to be infected with the coronavirus also can be daunting, he noted.

Moore and other area law enforcement leaders talked with The Times Leader in recent days about how the pandemic has changed various aspects of their profession.

“When it first came out, everything (crime) diminished a little bit because of the fear, but after time it went back to pretty much being normal. The only problem that we do see is a slight uptick in domestic incidents with people that are secluded to themselves all the time,” Moore said.

He noted that police have adjusted to greater use of personal protective equipment.

“It’s a little bit cumbersome, but I don’t think it’s out of the normal realm of what we deal with in PPE for other calls. Now it’s just the idea that we’re constantly having PPE,” he said. “It hinders your ability to communicate with others sometimes.”

Lip reading is impossible when a person’s mouth is covered by a mask, and the tone of voice can also be obscured.

“Seventy-five percent of all communication’s non-verbal, so when you take away half the face, it’s hard,” he said. “It adds to the stress factor because it’s a virus you may have picked up unknowingly, and you don’t exhibit signs of it, and it’s possible you could take it home and infect those close with you, and you may not know that you’ve done it, and you may not find out for days that it’s already done.”

St. Clairsville Police Chief Matt Arbenz said his officers are adjusting as needed during the epidemic.

“Most to all of our in-person trainings this entire year have been canceled,” he said, adding that the department has instead used online training programs along with mandated group training in firearms and taser operation.

“We’ve had to assign cruisers — that way we don’t cross-contaminate — and everybody’s got extra cleaning chores with the cruisers and inside the office at the beginning and end of their shift,” he said. “We run into situations where officers have been in close contact with people, and they’ve had to be quarantined until tested until they could return to work. It’s left us short-handed a time or two. … We’re getting our shifts filled, it’s just costing us a little bit of overtime.”

Other new duties have included checking on children while the schools were closed and parents were at work.

“We really do appreciate the community and all their support and the way everybody’s held together and not let frustrations get the best of them,” he said.

At the Ohio State Highway Patrol St. Clairsville post, Lt. Maurice Waddell said traffic volume in the region is back to pre-coronavirus levels after a significant decrease at the start of the pandemic.

“We’ve been fortunate that we haven’t had anybody on quarantine here at the post,” he said, adding his troopers take precautions while dealing with travelers from across the country. “There’s a lot of traffic that comes through Belmont County.”

During summer, the post provided assistance to Belmont Correctional Institution when numerous inmates and staff at the prison were infected.

Bethesda Councilman Rod Miller, a member of the village police committee, said the community’s lone full-time officer had to be quarantined for a time when a family member tested positive for COVID-19. The Belmont County Sheriff’s Department provided law enforcement in the village during his absence.

Sheriff David Lucas said his deputies are meeting the challenge.

“We have enacted protocols and safety guidelines that the (U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention) put out. … We follow them to the T, the letter, if not even more,” he said.

One issue that had to be addressed early in the outbreak was overpopulation at the county jail.

“We have really been fortunate, working with the prosecuting office, the judges, the court system in Belmont County in regards to trying to limit new arrests and, at the beginning, we downsized our population. Of the ones that was not a serious arrest or an arrest of violence or a safety concern to the community, they were released or furloughed at that time to get our numbers down.”

Lucas thanked local police departments for cooperating.

“All the cases and all the calls were responded to and all the investigations were done,” Lucas said, adding that suspects in lower-level misdemeanor cases might not be arrested on the spot, but they are still charged and summoned to court.

“Nobody’s getting a free pass,” Lucas noted.

Until recently, the jail had been spared coronavirus cases, but cases were confirmed there recently.

“It’s hard to pin down where it come from, because everybody has a … social life outside of their job,” Lucas said. “It did make it inside our place. It really affected one shift, and it’s unable to be determined whether it was brought in by an inmate. … We know one was probably brought in by a family member.”

“We had, at one time … five total workers, corrections officers, and two inmates,” Lucas said, adding most of the staff have recovered and one inmate remained quarantined Friday.

Enforcing precautions in the jail can be challenging.

“When this hit, we handed out masks to all the inmates and we try our best on the enforcement of it,” he said, adding that noncompliance among inmates remains a problem.

Lucas’ department continues to seek grant funding for upgrades to equipment, including special masks to assist deputies with breathing while doing strenuous tasks. But he said precautions can only do so much.

“As close and as guarded, even our president of the United States, he got COVID-19, he and his wife,” Lucas said. “That’s how serious it is.”