‘Lots of calls’ to Regina police on COVID rules

With stricter COVID-19 rules in place — or about to be this weekend — the focus naturally turns to police to ensure the law is being followed.

“There’s really a lot of concern in the community about the variants. You can tell neighbours and people in our city are taking this very seriously. We’re receiving lots of calls,” Regina Police Service Chief Evan Bray said Thursday.

A man was just fined $2,800 after police said there was a gathering of 11 at a home on McMillan Drive in the Lakeridge neighbourhood early Thursday morning.

The current public health order says indoor gatherings can only include people from the same household.

Bray said that call is a good example of something that’s very risky in the middle of a pandemic.

Indoor private gatherings are basically non-existent under the new public health guidelines. That means more people may be headed outside. Parks and playgrounds are still open.

However, they do have gathering limits as well.

“A lot of it has got to do with the size of the location of where they’re at and how close they are together,” Bray said.

He said not every COVID call police get materializes into something that would be technically a breach of the health order.

He thinks children have adapted.

“We’ve lived through this for now over a year,” Bray said. “Kids have adapted. Kids understand the importance of masks and social distancing and all of the things we talk about now as common language.”

The goal for young kids is to educate them, Bray said. For parents, police prefer to reinforce the rules.