ALBANY — The roll call room for municipal police officers in the Rochester suburb of Greece now resembles a surgical ward.

“There are masks, gloves and containers of hand sanitizer all over the place,” said Greece Police Chief Patrick Phelan. He is also the president of the New York State Association of Chiefs of Police, which represents hundreds of top law enforcement executives throughout the state.

The coronavirus pandemic, according to Phelan and other police veterans, has abruptly altered what has long been the challenging occupation of policing.

The hazards faced by police officers are no longer limited to tense domestic violence calls, drunk drivers careening along a highway or barricaded individuals threatening to harm themselves or others.

They now have to perform their duties in a world where there is an invisible enemy that can sicken and even kill anyone it contacts — COVID-19.

New York’s social distance edicts and directives that people wear masks or face coverings when in close proximity to others have also added new dimensions to policing and created additional stress for the officers who have to deal with them, Phelan said.

“I think we have to be very careful that we respect people’s constitutional rights and civil rights with with regard to the right to assemble and freedom of religion,” he said. He noted there have been news reports concerning police efforts to interrupt those activities.

“I don’t think that is a good direction for us,” he said. “I really don’t. And it’s not what we’re here for. People need to trust the police and that is a challenge in and of itself. And if we’re violating their rights, it just drive the division further and further. Luckily, most of these situations have been in other states.”

Thomas Mungeer, a state trooper who heads the union representing uniformed troopers across the state, said the most difficult aspect for the officers he works with is the concern that if they get the virus on the job they could spread it to their loved ones.

“They have to deal with the public and this is something they don’t want to bring home to their wife and kids,” said Mungeer, a trooper for nearly three decades.

So far, he said, there has been a relatively low rate of infection among troopers, with about 100 of them having tested positive since the pandemic began in New York two months ago, and nearly all of them having recovered.

Police have limited ability to deal with the mask edict, Mungeer acknowledged, saying it amounts to a recommendation and is not enforceable by police. Diplomacy skills can be useful when dealing with individuals who disagree with social distancing measures or the mask guidance, he noted.

“What I have learned in my career is that the way you talk to people is 99% of getting past the problem,” he said.

Some departments are urging officers to try to resolve as many situations as possible through telephone contact, thus reducing the risk of coming into contact with the virus.

“We are telling our officers to avoid going to the scene when possible,” said Otsego County Sheriff Richard Devlin Jr.

While overall calls to the department have fallen off during the health crisis, there has been an uptick in domestic disputes and situations involving people experiencing mental health problems, Devlin said.

Devlin said there has also been a “dramatic increase” in unattended deaths, though whether COVID-19 was a factor in those fatalities is not known.

The sheriff’s department has also fielded occasional calls regarding the state’s guidance on gatherings.

“We provide people with the information from the executive orders and let them make the decisions on what they are going to do,” he said.

But the prolonged shutdown of many businesses and activities is taking its toll on the mood of many residents, the sheriff pointed out.

“People are at their wit’s end with this whole thing,” Devlin said. “We need to get back to some sort of normalcy.”

In Greece, Phelan suggested state leaders could craft more effective public protection policies if they vetted their ideas with police officials before imposing them on the public.

He said New York’s social distancing edicts have led some to believe that local police officers have to enforce them, creating a scenario for potentially volatile disagreements.

“You are caught between the person who doesn’t want to do it and the person who wants us to go make them do it,” the chief said. “This is going to get worse as the weather gets better and the duration of this event gets longer.”

Phelan said officers try to use gentle persuasion, when possible, to coax people to wear masks and abide by the social distancing measures.

Suggesting to a pastor that holding a religious gathering is not prudent in the middle of a pandemic is a better approach than threatening a clergy member with arrest, he noted. “That is just good community policing,” Phelan said.

There will be times when such suggestions from a police officer are rejected by a person who disagrees with a government edict, he acknowledged.

“And then who is going to enforce it?” he said. “The cops get stuck with that. And that’s the problem right now. We are kind of stuck in the middle.”