CINCINNATI — Cincinnati District 3 police officers are among the busiest in the city. Every day, they reportedly respond to the most calls for service, and the stresses of the pandemic have made it challenging for many of them.
Cincinnati Police Department officer Will Nastold can attest to those challenges. He’s been taking extra precautions to keep his fellow officers safe. But even with all the precautions, he’s been concerned about him contracting COVID-19 snd spreading it to others in the community.
“I could easily be going on 10, 12, 15 runs tonight,” said Nastold. “If I come into contact with two or three people on each one of those runs the number of contacts that I’m coming into multiplies very quickly.”
More importantly, he said he’s concerned about contracting the virus and it spreading to family, especially his four-year-old son who battles with a rare health condition.
“The concern there is that anytime he becomes ill,” he said. “Anything worse than a cold or anything like that it slows him down and presents very serious, possibly life-threatening issues for him.”
That’s why he had been pushing for vaccine priority for law enforcement. In other states, law enforcement has been prioritized to get vaccinated. But in Ohio officers were not added until March.
“There’s very few people who come into contact with more people than we do and so that’s why I feel again, it’s just imperative that we get these shots, we get vaccinated and that we help stop that spread,” he said.
Nastold had even planned to write a letter to Gov. Mike DeWine asking for vaccine priority.
“We came on this job to want to help our community and I don’t want to hurt the community that at the same time I’m trying to serve because of something that’s outside of my control,” he said.
