THE Chairman of South Yorkshire Police Federation has said it will be a challenge for policing to enforce the wearing of face masks in shops and fears that it could be used as yet another excuse to police bash.<\/p>\n
The Government has said that it will be mandatory to wear a face mask or covering in shops in England from 24 July, with fines of up to \u00a3100 for those who fail to comply.<\/p>\n
South Yorkshire Police Federation Chairman Steve Kent spoke on the Emma Barnett Show on BBC Radio 5 Live this morning, saying he had two main concerns.<\/p>\n
He said: \u201cIt\u2019s going to potentially cause a big rise in demand [for police]. What we found in lockdown was that loads of people were calling us with sometimes petty comments about neighbours having people round. And it sometimes swamped our call handlers.<\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019m concerned that when this first happens there\u2019s going to be a lot of uncertain shopkeepers who might get into conflict with customers and then quite rightly call the police. We don\u2019t want to be issuing fines for this. We just want to engage with the public and educate them.\u201d<\/p>\n
Steve also talked about a rise in \u201canti-police rhetoric\u201d in the media, saying: \u201cI get the feeling we\u2019re set up to fail here\u201d.<\/p>\n
He said: \u201cWhen lockdown was happening some forces got picked on with the way that they issued fines. And there was a backlash in the media about that. So I’m a bit concerned that this might be seen as an excuse to attack the police if we have to resort \u2013 and I mean\u00a0have<\/em>\u00a0to resort \u2013 to dishing fines out.\u201d<\/p>\n Steve continued: \u201cOfficers are bouncing from incident to incident, and that could be really serious, like domestic violence, which we should rightly be prioritising. And then if we start getting calls saying Joe Bloggs isn\u2019t putting his mask on in a shop it just adds to that strain.\u201d<\/p>\n Steve said that most of his members would not want to give fines to people breaking the face mask rules. He said: \u201cThey will do everything they can to reason with that person, persuade them to put a face mask on or, if not, to leave. We police by consent in this country and contrary to the rhetoric at the minute, we don\u2019t want to fall out with our communities.\u201d<\/p>\n \n