ESSEX Police Federation is confident officers will have the right PPE kit to deal with any violent protests or disorder they might encounter over the summer.<\/u><\/u><\/p>\n
The Metropolitan Police were blasted by the Metropolitan Police Federation for sending out officers without what they said was the proper PSU equipment they needed to deal with the minority who decided to cause trouble at recent protests in the capital.<\/u><\/u><\/p>\n
Essex Police Federation Chair Laura Heggie says she believes officers in Essex won\u2019t find themselves in the same situation.<\/u><\/u><\/p>\n
Protests from across the political divide have so far passed off peacefully in the county she said.<\/u><\/u><\/p>\n
However some senior police chiefs have told the service to prepare for a summer of discontent, all set against the need to keep safe as the pandemic hopefully starts to slow.<\/u><\/u><\/p>\n
\u201cThere are concerns, and I\u2019d like to hope that the majority of people that are having these demonstrations are there just to get their voice heard,\u201d Laura said.<\/u><\/u><\/p>\n
\u201cThe minority aren\u2019t there to get their voice heard; they\u2019re there just to cause disruption, harm, damage and also to assault other people.<\/u><\/u><\/p>\n
\u201cWith the pubs opening, I\u2019m hoping that we\u2019re not going to have public order offences and we\u2019re not going to have public disorder. People just need to be sensible.<\/u><\/u><\/p>\n
\u201cI am confident that Essex Police officers won\u2019t be in the same situation as their Met colleagues.\u201d<\/u><\/u><\/p>\n
COVID-19 is still a risk to officers when they are policing large crowds too, Laura warned, and an Essex force order to ensure PPE is used when social distancing isn\u2019t possible is the right decision.<\/u><\/u><\/p>\n
\u201cWe\u2019re fortunate in Essex that at our last demonstration the public order commander directed that if there wasn\u2019t social distancing, then PPE would be worn.<\/u><\/u><\/p>\n
\u201cSo if officers were deployed in cordons or close proximity to each other, even just travelling within the vans together, they had to be wearing facemasks. It\u2019s for their own protection, and for the protection of their colleagues.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
ESSEX Police Federation is confident officers will have the right PPE kit to deal with any violent protests or disorder they might encounter over the summer. The Metropolitan Police were\u2026 read more →<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":134533,"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\/134412"}],"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=134412"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/essexfedfocus.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/134412\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":134614,"href":"https:\/\/essexfedfocus.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/134412\/revisions\/134614"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/essexfedfocus.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/134533"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/essexfedfocus.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=134412"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/essexfedfocus.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=134412"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/essexfedfocus.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=134412"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}