A police force has said it won’t respond to calls about shoppers who refuse to wear face masks.
Devon and Cornwall’s police chief said officers will only attend and enforce the law if violence or disorder was involved.
It comes as face coverings will be made mandatory in shops in England from Friday – with flouters facing fines of £100.
But it is unclear how shoppers will be made to follow this, with some forces saying they may not be able to tightly enforce the new rules.
Police and crime commissioner for Devon and Cornwall Alison Hernandez said: ‘We are moving back into ordinary policing. The expectation is that [police officers] will only come if there is disorder or violence or something associated with it.
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‘They are not going to come to every phone call that someone is not wearing a mask.
‘It will just as we do now with Covid, the police work on the four Es so they engage people, they encourage people, they educate people and they enforce – that may not be the right order – but they will still be doing that.’
A top east London police officer has echoed similar thoughts, saying his force will not be patrolling supermarket aisles to check whether people are wearing face masks.
Detective chief superintendent Stephen Clayman, who is in charge of the police force in Barking and Dagenham, Havering and Redbridge, told the Barking and Dagenham Post: ‘In my view it is simply not a priority for us clearly but of course we will deal with it when we need to.
‘At the moment we have got to concentrate on more pressing things around crime.
‘We will deal with it exactly the same way, I suspect, as we did with the other Covid rules – around encouraging and explaining. The fine is the last thing we do if we have to.
‘I can’t see us being any different because this is for people’s wellbeing ultimately. This is to help them and about protecting other people. But I don’t envisage we will be patrolling the aisles of Tesco.’
He added the force is waiting to hear what its involvement will be in policing the new rules.
Environment secretary George Eustice said last week that shops would have a ‘role to play’ in enforcing face coverings.
But he admitted: ‘When it comes to that final sanction of issuing a penalty, that is something that only the police can do.’
The National Police Chiefs Council suggested last week that officers would only intervene over face masks as a ‘last resort’.
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