ESSEX Police Federation has said its members have \u201cabsolutely risen to the challenge\u201d of policing the lockdown and have \u201cdone their utmost to keep their community safe and look after one another\u201d.<\/p>\n
Steve Taylor, Chairman of Essex Police Federation, said the pandemic had brought obvious challenges, such as the health impact on officers and their loved ones. \u201cWe are just people that want to go home at the end of the day,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
But an additional \u2013 and worrying \u2013\u00a0development has been the increase in the numbers of people spitting on and assaulting officers. More than 300 people across the UK were convicted for assaults on emergency workers during the first month of lockdown, leading to Home Secretary Priti Patel saying that those who coughed or spat on police officers in an attempt to infect them with Covid-19 would face \u201cthe full force of the law\u201d.<\/p>\n
The Home Office is now consulting on doubling the maximum sentence for such crimes from one year to two years. Steve said: \u201cIt\u2019s a bit disappointing that they didn\u2019t listen to the Federation the first time round, when we looked to increase the penalties that those convicted of assaulting officers through spitting at them could face.\u201d<\/p>\n
Steve continued: \u201cOn the positive side, sickness in Essex is remarkably low. And demand for our services has come down through the lockdown period, unsurprisingly, because the shops aren\u2019t open to steal from for instance.\u201d<\/p>\n
Essex Police officers had adapted well to the ever-changing circumstances and Government advice, Steve said. \u201cBe it adapting to working at home, be it the social distancing in the workplace, be it coming to terms with the varying levels and advice around PPE, which in the early days was changing on a daily basis, they\u2019ve absolutely risen to the challenge.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cIn typical British policing style, they\u2019ve knuckled down and worked through the problems and done their utmost in keeping their community safe and looking after one another.\u201d<\/p>\n
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ESSEX Police Federation has said its members have \u201cabsolutely risen to the challenge\u201d of policing the lockdown and have \u201cdone their utmost to keep their community safe and look after\u2026 read more →<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":120110,"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\/129508"}],"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=129508"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/essexfedfocus.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/129508\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":129710,"href":"https:\/\/essexfedfocus.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/129508\/revisions\/129710"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/essexfedfocus.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/120110"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/essexfedfocus.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=129508"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/essexfedfocus.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=129508"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/essexfedfocus.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=129508"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}