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A UK police chief constable has backtracked after warning that officers would check shopping trolleys if people continued to flout coronavirus lockdown guidance.
Nick Adderley, of Northamptonshire Police, said his force was only “a few days away” from introducing crackdown measures as a “three-week grace period” is over in the county.
His exact words at a daily press briefing were: “We will not, at this stage, start to marshal supermarkets and checking the items in baskets and trolleys to see whether it’s a legitimate, necessary item.
“But again, be under no illusion, if people do not heed the warnings and the pleas I’m making today, we will start to do that.”
His comments were seized on by the civil liberties group Big Brother Watch, which compared the measures with a “police state”.
And home secretary Priti Patel said searching trolleys are “not appropriate”.
But soon after a backlash began to brew, the force sent out a tweet which read: “We absolutely will not be searching people’s shopping trolleys in Northamptonshire.”
It even stated there had been “suggestions made in the media” about searching baskets and trolleys, despite Adderley being quoted in full.
And in a Q&A session on Facebook, Adderley began by addressing his own comments.
He said: “There has been a really short grab clip of one of the statements I have actually made which has caused a bit of consternation, certainly on social media.
“This is the bit around, are we going to start marshalling supermarkets and checking shopping trolleys and baskets and so on.”
Adderley said he “may have been clumsy in that language” and proceeded to read snippets of a brief he sent to his force about the new measures he would be putting in place to police the regulations.
Here are his full comments from the earlier press conference:
“I really need to emphasise the point, this is about saving people’s lives, this is the really serious end of what we do.
“The role of the police is to preserve lives and protect property and we have to do that and we will do that.
“If things don’t improve, and we don’t get the compliance we would expect, then the next stage will be road blocks and it will be stopping people to ask why they are going, where they’re going.
“This is about reasonableness and if people are not reasonable in terms of the journeys and the trips they are taking, they are going to fall foul of the law.
“We will not, at this stage, be setting up road blocks. We will not, at this stage, start to marshal supermarkets and checking the items in baskets and trolleys to see whether it’s a legitimate, necessary item.
“But again, be under no illusion, if people do not heed the warnings and the pleas I’m making today, we will start to do that.”
Government guidelines state people should stay at home unless they are shopping for “basic necessities” or medicine, helping a vulnerable person or exercising once per day.
Last week, HuffPost UK reported how police forces were strictly enforcing lockdown rules that were never actually put in place, including time limits on exercise and the number of people allowed on a shopping trip.
Of the initial comments by Northamptonshire Police, Silkie Carlo, director of Big Brother Watch, said: “The suggestion of police rummaging through people’s shopping trolleys is outrageous.
“It would be completely disproportionate for police to start investigating shopping baskets or stopping every car at road checks, and there’s no legal basis for them to do so.
“You’d think police have far more important work to do. This public health crisis requires public co-operation, not a police state.
“Threats of unlawful and heavy-handed policing remain a daily occurrence and urgently need to be reined in.”
Patel said: “That’s not appropriate, let me be clear about that. That is not the guidance, that is not down to the measures we’ve been adopting thus far.
“I think though, what we should just say about this weekend, in particular, is the weather is going to be good, it’s Easter, we really do need to all take
responsibility here, and, it’s not about overreach.”
Patel insisted she was “absolutely not” considering tougher coronavirus lockdown conditions.
The row comes as forces across England and Wales are urging people to stay at home, with good weather expected over the Easter weekend.