South Yorkshire Police expecting rise in Covid demand with new restrictions
It's as stats show they've dealt with more breaches in shops than in pubs
South Yorkshire Police is expecting a rise in Covid-related demand now new restrictions to control the virus have come in across the county.
From today people are banned from mixing with other households indoors.
The force is currently dealing with around 400 incidents relatated to coroanvirus breaches every week but they're expecting that to go up with the new rules.
During the height of lockdown, officers were dealing with around 200 incidents every single day.
Assistant Chief Constable David Hartley told a Public Accountability Board meeting the force will be targeting its enforcement:
"Moving forward I think what we have to clear of is that any enforcement action is firstly evidence-based.
"We've done the analysis of our Covid incidents so far, we can see that around 18% of our Covid-related incidents are to shops, shortly below that it's about 16% of incidents of incidents are to pubs and it's about 12% for restaurants.
"We also have a hotspot map of georgraphic areas where we can see the public health risk infection rates. So we're going to take enforcement activity based upon those where we can make best impact on what is a public health issue in terms of infection rates.
"So whether it's geographic location, or a thematic area, or incidents where we're seeing clear defiance."
Last month Chief Constable Stephen Watson said the force's approach to enforcing coroanvirus rules was changing to be "increasingly less tolerant of wilful non-compliance".
David Hartley echoed that message in the meeting:
"If people are clearly aware and are putting their broader community at risk through their activities, that's where we'll place our enforcementt activity and by having that rationale hopefully we'll be able to mantain public confidence by saying there's a reason why we're doing this and that's to try and keep everyone well."