Sussex Police Federation Chairman highlights to BBC Radio the difficulties of policing lockdown legislation

8 March 2021

Chairman Daren Egan has been on BBC Radio Sussex highlighting the “difficult job police officers” have enforcing the Government’s lockdown legislation.

Topics for discussion included what is local and Sussex Police officers not being provided the Covid-19 vaccine as a priority.

Daren explained: “Local is local, for me it’s stay in your town, in your vicinity we’ve had people previously driving to Sussex from Birmingham…which is not allowed.”

“We’ve had quite a lot of fines over the weekend and in my experience when the sun comes out so does the people.

“When we’re talking about fines being issued it’s not someone walking from their house within a short distance, we’re talking about most fines being issued when people have come from outside the area and that is not exercise.”

Daren expressed his sympathy with why people want to get out, he said: “Police officers don’t have the burning desire to issue fines to people who are going out and exercising, we’ve all got families and we’re all in this together…however we are in full lockdown.

Furthermore, Daren explained the difficulties police officers have – having to “enforce the rules whether we’ve got a vaccine or not.”

He added: “We’ve got a really difficult job to do because we’re being used by the Government to enforce this legislation and vast majority of officers are unvaccinated.”