Morning drives into work for West Columbia Assistant Police Chief Scott Morrison now remind him of Sunday mornings from his youth. “The only thing open back then was Grandma's house. And you’d be lucky if a gas station was open,” he says Wednesday morning, April 8, 2020 at city hall. A statewide “Stay at Home or Go to Work Order,” went into effect the night before.



Morrison, who grew up in Irmo and graduated from the University of South Carolina in 1994, has been with the West Columbia department for 25 years — where he has shaken thousands of hands on the job.



”I'd had shaken your hand when we walked up,” he says when asked about the changes in policing, “That's quite a change for people down here in the South because usually you greet people when you see them. Our investigators here in the building, we're not taking anyone back behind our secured doors anymore. We are interviewing prisoners at the county jail. And we don’t bring them here like we used to — we interview people in a large room here and we don’t take them behind our secure doors.”



He says officers are also being extra cautious maintaining distance between themselves and members of the public. Morrison no longer works the same schedule, as shifts have been rearranged to limit the number of people in the building at one time.



“Our road patrols have also started doing phone reports. We did not do that before and that's something new,” he says, “If we can do a report over the phone, we'll do it over the phone. If it's a situation where we have to go out and collect evidence, or have to have someone on the scene, obviously we will go to the scene like we normally would.”



Morrison, married to a teacher, use to start his workday at the gym. He now fulfills that need at home. “I'm working out in my garage and just making up things that I do,” he says, “I’m doing push-ups. I'm doing dips on chairs. I set up a ladder last night to do pull ups. You name it, I just make it up as I go.”