MHPS

By Chantal Wagner

COVID-19 Fines

Local response to COVID-19 provincial penalties

Apr 6, 2020 | 5:33 PM

MEDICINE HAT, AB -Nearly two weeks ago, law enforcement agencies were granted full authority by the province to enforce public health orders and issue fines amid the COVID-19 pandemic.

The orders include ensuring self-isolation rules are being followed which requires returning travellers to self-isolate for 14 days upon returning to Alberta.

According to the government, violators may have to pay tickets up to $1-thousand per occurrence.

Courts could also administer $100-thousand to $500-thousand fines depending on the circumstances.

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Inspector Brent Secondiak with Medicine Hat Police says he’s impressed so far with community response as most of the city is following the rules.

He says the detachment has had few calls for service.

And most often find people are unaware of the orders and are educating residents on measures like physical distancing.

“Up to this point in time, we’ve had zero tickets issued. We’ve had a couple of conversations with people on what exactly the rules are and they seem to be generally compliant. So again, compared to other areas of the province and even areas of the country Medicine Hat has been outstanding.”

He says police are impressed thus far with the community response.

“There’s also a lot of self-policing going on. The community if they identified someone, we had someone the weekend where it was put on Facebook that they were going to cut hair. And we had six or seven notifications within a few minutes that this was happening.”

Secondiak says concerns can be reported online on their website or mobile app anytime. Or by calling their call centre at 403-529-8481. He says the call centre is staffed 7 days a week from 7 am-7 pm.

Meantime, Staff Sgt. Sean Maxwell with Redcliff RCMP says they haven’t had to step in for physical distancing measures and have had no specific calls in regards to it.

He says, for the most part, the detachment is striving to educate residents rather than enforce.

Maxwell believes COVID-19 enforcement would only be used in the most egregious situation.

“And we still got other policing issues that we’re dealing with. We’re still getting domestics, we might get thefts, you know crimes that are happening as well. And that’s why we’re trying to say Alberta Health Services is more equipped at this point to initially deal with things and if they can’t get cooperation from people and it needs to get pushed further they can certainly call us at that point,” he said.

Maxwell adds RCMP are seeing more people out in rural areas going for drives.

And he reminds the public not to trespass on private land.