CURFEWS and fixed penalty notices could be used to crack down on police officer assaults while the courts are closed due to the coronavirus, the Chairman of the Police Federation of England and Wales has said.<\/p>\n
John Apter took to BBC News to condemn the \u201cvile creatures\u201d who spit at and deliberately cough on the police officers keeping them safe during the partial lockdown.<\/p>\n
He told Victoria Derbyshire: \u201cWe have seen examples where my colleagues are targeted by these vile creatures who spit and cough and who use the coronavirus almost as a weapon. My members are already under immense pressure, they don\u2019t need idiots like this making it even worse and causing them danger.<\/p>\n
\u201cI contacted the Home Office, the Home Secretary, the NPCC, Chief Constables directly and said if this an emerging trend, if this is what some elements of society are going to do, we need to have emergency legislation. We already have some in place but it doesn\u2019t go far enough, we need to deal with these idiots and deal with them robustly.<\/p>\n
\u201cAll the indications are that the Government are on side to do the right thing so we need sentences and penalties to be harsher to nip this in the bud. It is completely unacceptable.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe can use fixed penalty notices and curfews, but it is also about the vast majority of the public and the broader media telling these people that it is not acceptable. Public pressure can do so much and I plea to people to support your police.<\/p>\n
\u201cMy colleagues are facing some vile, hostile behaviour by a minority and we need to deal with this as a society.\u201d<\/p>\n
Mr Apter also called for public backing in adhering to the rules set out by the Prime Minister last night to take the pressure off police colleagues.<\/p>\n
He added: \u201cMy colleagues will crack down on public gatherings but with regard to policing the bread aisles in the supermarkets or checking how many times people are going to the shops, that is impractical. My plea to the public is don\u2019t put additional pressure on the police and the NHS \u2013 heed the advice.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
CURFEWS and fixed penalty notices could be used to crack down on police officer assaults while the courts are closed due to the coronavirus, the Chairman of the Police Federation\u2026 read more →<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":116987,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/essexfedfocus.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/116906"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/essexfedfocus.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/essexfedfocus.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/essexfedfocus.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/essexfedfocus.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=116906"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/essexfedfocus.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/116906\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":117088,"href":"https:\/\/essexfedfocus.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/116906\/revisions\/117088"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/essexfedfocus.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/116987"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/essexfedfocus.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=116906"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/essexfedfocus.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=116906"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/essexfedfocus.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=116906"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}