OFFICERS want to police with a common sense approach during an unprecedented time as the country remains in lockdown.<\/p>\n
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.<\/p>\n
But South Yorkshire Police Federation Chairman Steve Kent says his members want to be sensible in the way they enforce the lockdown.<\/p>\n
Steve said: \u201cGenerally speaking cops just want to go out and push out a common sense message. But it doesn\u2019t help when it\u2019s pushed out in the media that we are being really heavy handed because that\u2019s not our intent.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe 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\u2019t want to necessarily abide with that, for whatever reason.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe find ourselves being dragged around a bit in terms of reports of petty lockdown breaches and there\u2019s an expectation from the public that we\u2019ll police them with force, which is contrary to the position that we need to take.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe simply can\u2019t do that because we just don\u2019t 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.\u201d<\/p>\n