SOUTH Yorkshire Police officers have been \u201ca credit to their force\u201d by the way they have supported communities during the coronavirus pandemic.<\/p>\n
Federation Chairman Steve Kent praised officers for getting out on the streets despite their own entirely understandable anxieties about the pandemic.<\/p>\n
Steve said: \u201cDemand was down slightly earlier on, but it\u2019s picking up now with the restrictions being relaxed.<\/p>\n
\u201cObviously officers find themselves in the difficult situation of starting to attend incidents where there may well be people who have Covid.<\/p>\n
\u201cSo there\u2019s anxiety out there, but officers have got on with their jobs and carried on doing as much as they can to support their local communities, despite their own anxieties around the illness.\u201d<\/p>\n
There have been sporadic outbreaks of coronavirus in certain police stations in the force area, but Steve said so far \u201conly a handful\u201d of officers who have been quite poorly, with the majority of officers being asymptomatic or having mild symptoms.<\/p>\n
He added that most of the public had been on side with the lockdown measures as well as the more recent Government guidelines. He said that language barriers or cultural differences could present challenges, but officers had tried to advise and engage with people.<\/p>\n
Steve explained: \u201cOn the odd occasion when the message hasn\u2019t been getting home, they have had to enforce it and they\u2019ve done that consistently and with the backing of the force. We have taken a proportionate approach and there have only been a tiny number of fixed penalty notices compared to the 1.5 million people who live in our county.\u201d<\/p>\n