Four ERPD Officers Out of Self-Quarantine

Four East Ridge Police officers who were self-quarantining are back on the job, officials said Monday.

ERPD Chief Stan Allen said in a press release that the officers have returned after officials received word that a coronavirus test given to a woman they had contact with on March 20 during an arrest showed negative results.

The officers had come into contact with a female near the Food City on March 20, officials said. When she was taken to the Hamilton County Jail, staff there noticed the woman was exhibiting COVID-19 symptom. She was released by a magistrate on her own recognizance then taken to Erlanger hospital for a coronavirus test.

At the time, Chief Allen said out of caution, the involved officers would self-quarantine. He said then that the results of the test could take as much as two weeks.

Chief Allen said the four officers who self-quarantined were never tested for COVID-19.

Asked if any other ERPD officers are under quarantined, Chief Allen said there were none.

About Dick Cook

Dick Cook has lived in East Ridge since the Kennedy Administration when his parents bought a house on Marietta Street. Dick graduated from ERHS in 1976 before going on to the University of Tennessee at Chattanooga where he studied Political Science. Dick worked for the Chattanooga Free-Press and the Chattanooga Times Free Press for 22 years. Free-Press Sports Editor Roy Exum plucked him out of production in 1989 and gave him a job as a sports reporter. Dick covered everything from prep sports to the whitewater events on the Ocoee River for the 1996 Olympics. When Chattanooga's two paper's merged, he became the Crime Reporter covering both the Chattanooga Police and Fire Departments. He was among reporters who were honored by the Associated Press for the TFP's coverage of the 2002 fog-shrouded crash on I-75 in Catoosa County, Dick and his wife, Cathy, live on Marlboro Avenue where they are seen frequently chasing around their three grandsons.