Police Will Not Be Heavy-Handed Over Lockdown Breaches

OFFICERS want to police with a common sense approach during an unprecedented time as the country remains in lockdown.

Demand on policing has changed since the Government imposed a lockdown in late March, with officers dealing with a spike in calls reporting people who are not adhering to social distancing guidelines.

But South Yorkshire Police Federation Chairman Steve Kent says his members want to be sensible in the way they enforce the lockdown.

Steve said: “Generally speaking cops just want to go out and push out a common sense message. But it doesn’t help when it’s pushed out in the media that we are being really heavy handed because that’s not our intent.

“The issue we face is trying to keep everybody indoors and keep them abiding by the lockdown. The difficulty we sometimes have is the communities within our inner cities who don’t want to necessarily abide with that, for whatever reason.

“We find ourselves being dragged around a bit in terms of reports of petty lockdown breaches and there’s an expectation from the public that we’ll police them with force, which is contrary to the position that we need to take.

“We simply can’t do that because we just don’t want to fall out with our communities at the end of this. We want to keep our communities onside for when these things are lifted and we can crack on again as normal.”