Ingleside Station, Monday morning, March 16, 2020

The Ingleside Police Station was closed for around two hours Monday morning for a cleaning by Public Works after two San Francisco Police officers last night were potentially exposed to a person with COVID-19.

At around 8:30 p.m. on Sunday, the two officers took a person to the hospital. It was at the hospital that they came into contact with another person who claimed that he had COVID-19.

The officers noted this in their report upon returning to the station. They were sent home and their fellow SFPD officers were made to decamp the station between around 7 and 9 a.m. Monday morning while Public Works employees scoured the facility.

A large Public Works truck with flashing lights was still parked on the narrow lane leading to Ingleside Station at around 9:45 a.m. Monday morning.

Police spokesman Sgt. Michael Andraychak said both of the officers are at home, as they would be at the conclusion of any 10-hour shift. A police physician, working with the Department of Public Health, is seeking more information on the identity of the person who claimed to have COVID-19 to determine, in part, if his claim was credible.

Whether the officers will be tested is not yet known.

Police officers told Mission Local to expect more such situations as front-line officers, inevitably, come into contact with people carrying the virus.

See more updates on the coronavirus’s impact here. 

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Managing Editor/Columnist. Joe was born in San Francisco, raised in the Bay Area, and attended U.C. Berkeley. He never left.

“Your humble narrator” was a writer and columnist for SF Weekly from 2007 to 2015, and a senior editor at San Francisco Magazine from 2015 to 2017. You may also have read his work in the Guardian (U.S. and U.K.); San Francisco Public Press; San Francisco Chronicle; San Francisco Examiner; Dallas Morning News; and elsewhere.

He resides in the Excelsior with his wife and three (!) kids, 4.3 miles from his birthplace and 5,474 from hers.

The Northern California branch of the Society of Professional Journalists named Eskenazi the 2019 Journalist of the Year.

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1 Comment

  1. So . . . after this potential exposure they went about their normal duties and didn’t tell anybody. Then, presumably some time later, “noted” it in their report and that’s how people found out? And then, HOURS later, the decision was made to clean the station? Nothing about this makes any sense. Don’t the police have any protocols in place for dealing with potential exposures???

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