How rules to minimise the risk of spreading and catching covid-19 are policed, such as in shopping centres, is featured in the November print edition of Professional Security magazine. Mark Rowe reports further.
Until medical science finds a solution, controlling the spread is down to how we behave. Hence Government guidance – rules, that restrict behaviour in public. As the rules (social distancing, wearing a face covering, the ‘rule of six’) may go against what is natural – going to a pub with mates, having your hair cut at a barber’s, shopping generally – they have to be enforced.
Hence on September 9, the Government spoke of ‘covid-19 secure marshals’. Details – such as their powers, what personal protective equipment (PPE) they ought to wear, any uniform or identifying badge, any training or protocols if aggressive encounters with the public get out of hand – were not vouchsafed.
On public transport, for example, you must wear face coverings for the full journey, including inside stations, and in taxis and private hire vehicles. If you do not, you could be denied travel, or receive a minimum £200 fine, point out Transport for London. It’s not as if you cannot avoid wearing a mask, without much trouble, if you so wish; TfL offer a web link to order a badge to show that you are exempt (what check TfL makes that you are really exempt, is not stated).
Yet in London as anywhere else, ever since lockdown eased and people returned to buses and trains in mid-June, what Siwan Hayward, Director of Compliance, Policing Operations and Security at TfL early this month called ‘a selfish minority‘ is still not keeping to the rules; as any passenger can see.
As coronavirus is spread by coughs and breathing, so the face covering rule was brought in, to reduce (not cut out all) risk of transmission. And no-one can be unaware of the rule, given government advertising and posters. As the Met Police said, its officers have challenged thousands of people for not wearing a face covering; and, most people respond to officers’ advice and put one on. In other words, they own a mask but choose not to wear it. This is leaving aside social distancing, which is so routinely not kept to – for example on Underground escalators – enforcement is pointless.
There lies the problem for enforcers; as with other mass potential offences, such as traffic, there’s far more wrong-doing than humans to physically intervene and hand out a ‘ticket’. Hence speed cameras, to automate enforcement. Coronavirus however does not, or has not yet, allowed for automation of rule-enforcement like speeding at 38mph in a 30mph zone.
Coronavirus poses a public health risk for the enforcers, covid-19 secure marshals or police or a pub doorman or a security officer or general retail worker at the entrance of a supermarket; in a way pre-pandemic mass offences such as road traffic do not.
What covid-marshals have emerged in recent weeks have been, as in Gateshead, made up of council workers – retrained environmental health, trading standards and enforcement staff. Let’s leave aside that trading standards staff ought to have enough work to do countering the avalanche of online and other scams, many arising from covid-19 and preying on people’s fears.
If you were to choose a field to recruit from for covid-19 marshals – having to change focus quickly, and face risk – it would not be local government, not renowned for its agile ways of working. While such a ‘safety first’ attitude might be ideal, the local government union Unison says that ‘our members should never be in a situation where they might endanger themselves and others in the course of doing their jobs’. Indeed, in late September, general government advice was that office workers in England who can work effectively at home should do so over the winter.
As Unison points out; employers are legally required to do everything that they reasonably can to make work and the place of work safe – and should consult staff and union safety reps. That hardly opens council workers to going around by definition at-risk venues.
Oxford example
A COVID secure team of community safety, environmental health, licencing and trading standards officers from all six Oxfordshire councils has been at work since mid-September. The councils wrote to businesses, and made visits, for example takeaways, pubs and bars on Cowley Road in Oxford – a student haunt, including KFC and Bodrum Kebab, the first to be fined for covid offences – in person on September 20. While as with other councils, Oxfordshire’s have been careful to paint its marshals as supportive of people, there is an enforcement aspect. The marshals make night-time patrols of Oxford city centre, Cowley Road and other ‘hotspots’.
Yet those first two fines were not issued until October 6 – to KFC Cowley Road for taking orders at the door and serving customers indoors, well after the 10pm on Friday, October 2; and similarly to Bodrum Kebab nearby. Significantly, visits to both takeaways followed complaints from the public about the businesses continuing to serve. The two premises were each fined £1000.
Is anyone saying they were the only offences in Oxfordshire that night or weekend?
Marshals can only be in one place at once – checking parks, hairdressers and other ‘dwell time’ businesses, and as first response in call-outs of complaints over house parties. Hence reporting by the public, many more pairs of ‘eyes and ears’ is so important, as with any crime (hence the 999 number). Yet by telling the public to report any breaches via the 101 non-emergency number, the police are in effect (and effectively) doing ‘demand reduction’, to use the jargon. The Greater Manchester Police website for example says ‘only report something if you think there is a serious breach of the rules like a large gathering of people obviously from lots of different households’. In other words, though any breach may be important to controlling the spread of covid-19, the authorities only want to know of some.
Besides ‘demand reduction’ – in other words, rationing of official physical response – any responders face the same risk of aggression and violence as retail staff do when trying to enforce rules against youths buying alcohol and cigarettes. The potential, moreover, for even ordinarily law-abiding people to fly off the handle if pulled up for not wearing a mask is huge, given short tempers of many. The leader of Gateshead Council acknowledged that ‘regulations change and there is a huge amount of information for a business to take in’. Which makes for annoyance and inadvertent rule-breaking.
n short; enormous likelihood that any effort at a mass enforcement of covid-19 rules necessary to make a difference would unleash violence and aggression – and as seen throughout the pandemic, some will deliberately cough and spit at law enforcers (and what would a local government risk assessment for marshals say about that?!).
Hence even the police have shown little appetite to act as ‘covid police’; nor has the Government or anyone suggested drawing on the obvious unused resource to enforce covid rules, the armed forces, who were called upon at short notice to staff the entrances to the London Olympics when G4S could not deliver the required number of security officers.
The central dilemma, then – more assertive enforcement will only bring so much ill feeling that it would threaten community cohesion (another jargon word) and be counter-productive – looks unresolvable, months into the pandemic. Meanwhile, the second wave rises.
