WHILE most people complied with restrictions over the Easter long weekend, officers from Chifley Police District still had to hand out fines to people who admitted they were ignoring the rules.
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The state and federal governments had urged people to stay at home, fearing there could be increased transmission of COVID-19 over the four-day period.
Chifley Police District acting Superintendent David Abercrombie said there were additional police deployed across the area to help enforce the restrictions under the Public Health Act.
"On the whole, people across the police district were well behaved, although we did have the need to issue in excess of 70 warnings, as well as seven infringement notices across the district," he said.
The seven infringements notices were issued to people in two separate incidents.
Four were issued to people discovered to be camping in Newnes.
"Police were patrolling [camping areas] due to the restrictions that were in place and came across a well-established campsite," acting Supt. Abercrombie said.
"The individuals were spoken to and informed police they were well aware of the restrictions in place and chose to ignore them.
"They all received a $1000 on-the-spot penalty notice."
The other fines handed out in the district were issued to three people found travelling in a vehicle in the Sunny Corner State Forest.
Acting Supt. Abercrombie said that, similar to the first incident, they told police that they were aware of the restrictions but "didn't care".
While blatant disregard of restrictions was disappointing, police were still pleased with the level of compliance over the weekend.
"It is disappointing, but at the same time only seven instances of that out of 42,000 people, whatever the population of Bathurst is, plus our other localities within the district, being Lithgow and Cowra and all the communities in between, it's not a bad percentage overall," acting Supt. Abercrombie said.
People can expect to see the increased police presence continue for some time to enforce social distancing and other restrictions.
In pleasing news, there has been a downturn in crime in the district in recent weeks.
"It's going against the trend of the state; there's been an increase across the state in a couple of crime categories which we haven't seen thankfully," acting Supt. Abercrombie said.
"But it was something that we were forecasting, things that were going to come about as a result of the restrictions that were put in place, like an increase in domestic violence and commercial break-and-enters offences, but we haven't seen that so far, which is good."
He said he believed this was a result of the presence of police in the community, combined with the public messaging around the COVID-19 restrictions.
On top of that, local police haven't experienced any more aggressive or rude behaviour than they typically would when they're working.
