Lockdown ghost hunters ‘put communities at risk’

Inspector Sarah Constantine, the Wolds Division’s senior officer, has revealed ghost hunters are just one of example of lockdown breaches that police have had to deal with.

In her quarterly report, she said: “Unfortunately, over the last few months during lockdown, we have had people travelling into our neighbourhood area to do things such as ghost hunting, off-road driving, camping, and just coming for a day out. For those people who have blatantly put our community at risk during the pandemic, we have issued a number of covid tickets.

“We have had an increase in anti-social behaviour reported incidents which cover everything from Covid breaches to neighbour disputes and ASB in public spaces.”

Insp Constantine reveals the impact Covid has had on an already ‘thin blue line’ of officers.

She confirmed less than a quarter of all calls to police (24 per cent) in the last 12 months were directly related to crime.

She reveals the biggest demand (33 per cent) was categorised as ‘other’ issues, many of them related to covid.

She adds officers are continuing to work to keep people safe and admits the easing of lockdown restrictions should lead to a change in demand on resources.

Insp Constantine said: “As we are moving out of lockdown and things are changing, we are doing our best to keep people safe in our communities and the type of demand around policing will change.”

She adds that the pandemic has also had an impact on an increase in calls of concern for safety and missing people (12 per cent).

She says: “These will always be a priority given the risk to life and the number of calls do not always reflect the time spent by officers dealing with people in crisis, or reflect the time spent on partnership work by teams to seek to ensure that other agencies and support networks are engaged with helping people when they need it.”

Insp Constantine urged people to report issues directly to police, rather than using social media.