NCJ Number
114678
Date Published
1989
Length
11 pages
Annotation
The AIDS epidemic raises two types of issues for police work: policies regarding police officers with AIDS and police contact with citizens and offenders with AIDS.
Abstract
Police departments should base their responses to the epidemic on awareness and knowledge of risks rather than panic and overreaction. In the United States, AIDS is mainly a disease of homosexuals and intravenous drug abusers that is not spread by casual contact. The disease is also concentrated in five States and in major metropolitan areas. Few departments have yet had to face the issue of police officers infected with AIDS. The most desirable policy would be to permit infected officers to work but to prevent them from having any kind of intrusive contact with citizens, thus allaying community fears. Other officers would not be in danger of job-related transmission, so departments would not be under any pressure to reveal the identity of an officer with AIDS. Police officers also face little risk of becoming infected during ordinary contacts with citizens. However, they should develop policies for handling situations in which an infected person might deliberately assault a police officer and should train officers about precautionary measures to use when searching pockets or other places that might contain contaminated needles or objects. A final area in which AIDS may affect law enforcement is through the various laws that will inevitably be enacted to deal with the epidemic. Enforcement of these laws will become the responsibility of the police. Footnotes and 20 references.