Northern Ireland

Covid-19: Assistant Chief Constable Todd says vaccinate the elderly before police

ACC Alan Todd is coordinating the PSNI's Covid response.
ACC Alan Todd is coordinating the PSNI's Covid response. ACC Alan Todd is coordinating the PSNI's Covid response.

The police officer tasked with orchestrating the PSNI's Covid response has said he wouldn't be comfortable taking the Covid vaccine ahead of the elderly.

The Police Federation last week called for police to be vaccinated as a matter of urgency.

However, Assistant Chief Constable Alan Todd said "The choices that health are making at the moment is whether they are going to vaccinate healthy 30-something (year old) police officers or people in their 80s who are likely to die from this disease, and I understand the decision making process.

"There's been nothing confirmed, it's a national plan and national prioritisation, we'll take our place among other emergency and key workers.

"I wouldn't seek to be in the front of the queue with people in their 60s, 70s and 80s behind me, but that's just my personal view".

As new tougher regulations came into force at the weekend, police issued 168 fines last weekend - mostly for individuals holding house parties.

"Where people are deliberately flouting or deliberately breaching or recklessly doing so, they can reasonably expect to be penalised," said ACC Todd.

He said despite this, the 8pm curfew in place the week after Christmas was "pretty well observed".

Adding breaches of the regulations were geographically similar, with urban and city compliance "pretty evenly spread out".

"Belfast, Derry/Londonderry will always give you big numbers, but that's down to population, when you look at that on a spread, it's pretty standard, pretty uniform right across the province and right across the policing districts", he said.

Around ten percent of the PSNI are currently either off duty having tested positive for Covid or are self isolating.

ACC Todd says the numbers of absent officers have stabilised in recent weeks.

"In an organisation this size you can track the infection impacts broadly in line with community infection rates, early on wasn't too bad, our biggest ever impact was in the third week of October last year - the autumn wave two spike - that was our lowest ever police officer availability.

"It seems to have started to stabilise again, but we are just citizens like everyone else and that's reflected in this organisation and also because we are an emergency service and working 24/7, the more people who have it the more people we're going to come into contact with who have it".

ACC Todd says while police are included in conversations with the Executive they've no role in shaping the legislative changes.

"These are health protection regulations, not your standard criminal justice legislation, so they are brought in at the behest of the Department of Health for health protection purposes, the need for them and the range of them is driven by health not policing.

"We are party to those conversations, but really our input is related to when the embarkations are made between regulations and guidelines or our advice is sought on whether a particular regulation will or won't work.

"We are advising on the practical policing implications of the regulations so that can be considered in the decision making process, but we are not dictating changes to the legislation", he said.

After debate around the effectiveness of the legislation, ACC Todd says he is now confident police have power of entry to private property, but says this is always to be balanced against Human Rights Laws.

"I never thought as a police officer we would be in this space where we are policing people's freedoms.

"We try our best 24 hours a day to make sure that we get the balance right between legislation and human rights and bringing people along with us and keeping people with us.

"We won't always get that balance right, even when we do not everyone will share our view of that balance, that's a daily challenge for us.

"I am confident that the legislation exists for that, the health protection regulations contains the provisions and it was put there for that purpose, that designated persons, and that includes almost exclusively police officers, can take any steps necessary to ascertain whether the regulations are being breached or where they are being breached to enforce them.

"But of course in policing we look to put a triangle around that and we talk about legality, necessity and proportionality.

"Legality has a basis in law but by our practices and on case by case and by central coordination and consideration of entering people's home and Article 8 of the Human Rights Convention right to enjoy your private life.

"We seek to balance that legal authority with the necessity and proportionality to make good decisions", he added.