Police Scotland issues 140 coronavirus fines
Police Scotland officers have issued more than 140 fixed penalty notices to people breaking coronavirus lockdown rules in the week since new legislation making it a criminal offence to ignore social distancing guidelines came into force.
Chief Constable Iain Livingstone said the “overwhelming majority” of people in Scotland have been doing the right thing and following the rules, but warned that his officers will not hesitate to take action against those who refuse to comply.
He told BBC Good Morning Scotland on Friday (April 3): “We’ve had to use the powers very infrequently. The level of cooperation and support from the public in terms of social distancing has been vast, overwhelming, everyone is stepping up and doing their duty.
“I said at the outset that we would use these powers only as a last resort and our approach would be to engage with people, to encourage people to comply with the social distancing guidelines, but where people refuse, where there’s absolute refusal to do the right thing by their fellow citizens, we will take action.
“We’ve issued more than 140 fixed-penalties right across the whole of Scotland in the first week, which is very low numbers in terms of enforcement, but I do think it’s important to know that when people refuse to cooperate, when people refuse to do the right thing, then police will take action.”
He said most of the fixed penalties had been issued to people in groups, including a gathering at a house party.
Levels of compliance in the UK remain higher than those in mainland Europe, where the tendency has been for people to become more restless the longer the lockdown remains in place.
French police have issued more than 359,000 fines for violating the lockdown, which began in mid-March, while Italian police have issued more than 400,000 fines.
