UK Covid breaches 'like antisocial behaviour', police chief says

Breaches of Covid regulations have become “another version of antisocial behaviour” for the police and are very difficult to deal with, a police chief has said.

Andy Rhodes, the chief constable for Lancashire Constabulary, told MPs on the home affairs select committee that calls relating to coronavirus breaches made up about 4% of calls to the force and were similar to antisocial behaviour calls with residents complaining about neighbours’ behaviour.

But he said the shift from tier 2 to tier 3 of local Covid restrictions in Lancashire had seen some residents have a “last blast”, triggering a rise in incidents over the weekend.

Rhodes said the force was only deploying officers to serious scenarios such as “150 people in a marquee”, adding that the force is “genuinely not knocking on people’s doors and asking how many people you have round for supper tonight”.

“That is not the policing style of British policing,” he said. “Covid has become like another version of antisocial behaviour for us. That’s what people are ringing us about.

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“Some of the Covid calls we’re getting are normal antisocial behaviour calls – there are 20 people in the park and they shouldn’t be there because of the Covid regulations.

“We are putting in the same policing response to those things as we’ve always done to some degree.”

He added: “It’s a very difficult area for us to police.”

But he said it was important and legitimate to have an enforcement element to the policing response.

“Over the weekend, because we went into tier 3, it was almost like some people thought we’ll have a last blast. Our Covid incidents went up 25% and so we issued significantly more tickets over the weekend.

“We’ve got 150 people hiring a marquee to have a wake. That hasn’t from day one been an area for confusion. That will attract a £10,000 fine if we can find the organiser. There needs to be a deterrent for people who are clearly and blatantly putting other people’s lives at risk in our view.”

More than 800 fixed-penalty notices have been issued in Lancashire, with more than 16,500 issued across England.

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Tier 3 restrictions, which include the closure of pubs that are not serving “substantial meals”, were introduced in Lancashire on 17 October. About 1.5 million people, including those living in Blackburn, Blackpool, Burnley, Lancaster and Preston, were affected by the new rules.

As of last Friday, the rates of coronavirus in the county were among the highest in the country, and were highest for those aged 16 to 29, at 552 per 100,000 people, while in the most vulnerable age group, those aged over 60, cases stood at 214 per 100,000 people.

Assistant chief constable Owen Weatherill, who is the National Police Chiefs’ Council lead for the Covid policing response, told the committee it was inevitable there would be a “level of fatigue” with the restrictions.

Weatherill said that he had made “strong representations” to the government for “simplified, consistent tiers that would be the same wherever they were applied”.

“That’s what I thought was going to happen 10 days ago,” he said.