Social distancing from La Crosse police’s perspective

It might be the most obvious thing, but perhaps not one many have thought about, but downtown La Crosse at midnight on a Friday night can now be a lonely place.

It’s not great for business, but not the worst thing for police.

“It’s definitely different, there’s no doubt about it,” La Crosse Police Chief Shawn Kudron said. “We have seen a reduction in some of our calls for service certainly, because people just are not out and about. They’re not out in the bars and things like that.”

Kudron, six months into the chief job and facing a global pandemic, said with bars and restaurants closed and group gatherings prohibited over the virus outbreak, police’s job has obviously been different.

“There are a lot of situations with this pandemic that we look at each day and realize we need to make some adjustments in what we do as a police agency, because there are certain situations that we haven’t had to confront before,” Kudron said.

Aside from the ghost towns, downtown, in a two college city with spring here but students unable to go to the bars and party, police have had to adjust to simpler, everyday duties.

Things like pulling someone over have put social distancing to the test — police leaning into that driver’s window to ask for license and registration.

Upon suggesting on La Crosse Talk PM (listen to the interview here) that, perhaps a driver could frisbee their license out the window to police, Kudron laughed and disagreed with that strategy while giving a straight answer.

“Well, I’m not sure about that completely,” he said. “We certainly don’t want people throwing things out the window, or putting us in a precarious position.”

With the governor’s guidelines in Wisconsin that have banned all public and private gatherings of any number that are not part of a single household, the police have had to enforce those rules.

“We have had calls where people are worried about some businesses they would think would be non-essential, and asking us to look into that,” Kudron said. “Had a few calls about, early on, about maybe groups being together when the governor’s orders started to come out, and kind of reduce the number of people who are together.”

Kudron added, however, that “typically, we have not really run into a lot of resistance there.”

On the show, Kudron was also asked about parking, of course. Downtown is dead, so only a few cars are ever parked on the streets. And, a lot of people are out of work. So, asked if police were going to be more lenient about enforcing parking, Kudron didn’t come straight out and say, ‘Yes.’

He talked more of how police still have to enforce things like handicap stalls, and that some of his staff — including parking enforcement offices — have been moved to more pressing areas of the department.

Again, he did not say they were being more lenient with parking — things like two-hour parking. But he didn’t say they weren’t, either. So, if you’re parking in a timed slot in La Crosse, you’ll just have to roll the dice and hope you don’t get a ticket.