Police departments across the metro area are feeling the affects of COVID-19 like everyone else. For many departments, training is currently at a minimum for both new and seasoned officers.
Bellevue Police Lieutenant Andy Jashinske says all classroom training has been canceled and essential defensive tactics training - which requires less than 6 feet of distance between people - has been postponed.
"With COVID-19 we're trying to distance ourselves from one another so that kind of training will be very difficult if not possible at this time," Jashinske tells 6 News.
Locally, a recruiting class at the Sarpy-Douglas Law Enforcement Academy, where several departments train, will be forced to start later. When they do resume they'll be split into smaller groups.
"That's going to be very instructor-intensive for us. We're going to have to have basically 3 times the instructors working that we usually would have," Jashinske says.
He also worries that if COVID-19 persists it could cause some big problems down the line.
"Ultimately, if the officers aren't well-trained that's not good for the community. We may have to put ourselves in a tough situation and train through it anyhow and that's dangerous exposing people to this possible illness," he told 6 News.
Papillion Police Chief Scott Lyons says officers would typically be going through annual training right now. But because of COVID-19, they have turned to more online training and are discussing the possibilities of modified training in which officers would wear personal protective gear like gloves, goggles, and masks.
Chief Lyons says in his nearly 40 years he's never dealt with anything quite so difficult.
"Because this is a novel virus we don't know a lot about it. We don't know if it's going to be seasonal. There are all these questions," he told 6 News. "So we're waiting for those questions to be answered and kind of covering our bases."