Please attribute to Assistant Commissioner Richard Chambers
Police would like to thank our community for their ongoing patience as we continue to operate 13 checkpoints in North and South Auckland under Alert Level 3 restrictions.
Since our message yesterday, Police has noticed an increased effort from members of the public to have documentation ready to show Police at the checkpoints.
Both North and South checkpoints have been flowing well this morning with minimal wait times.
Updated numbers show that as of 4pm yesterday, Police has processed 69,486 cars through the checkpoints. A total of 2205 vehicles have been turned around.
We had one incident yesterday where a 58-year-old man travelling on State Highway 1, northbound at Bombay, has attempted to evade Police by driving down the truck bypass lane.
A short pursuit was initiated but abandoned due to the dangerous manner of driving. Eagle located the vehicle at an address in Drury and the man was taken into custody without incident. He now faces a number of charges and will appear at Manukau District Court on 31 August 2020.
We continue to remind our community to make sure that they have the correct documentation or if required, have applied for an exemption to enter, leave or drive through Tāmaki Makaurau.
Information on this is available on the covid19 website.
Motorists can still expect delays at peak hours but Police is working as quickly as we can to get vehicles through checkpoints.
Police have been busy across the region since Wednesday undertaking road policing activities and reassurance patrols across essential facilities such as supermarkets, pharmacies and Covid-19 testing sites.
Police have conducted thousands of reassurance patrols across essential facilities since last Wednesday. This includes supermarkets, pharmacies and Covid-19 testing sites.
Since the introduction of Alert Level 3 restrictions in Auckland on 12 August four people have been warned for breaching the restrictions and we have had one arrest made as mentioned above.
Our focus remains on engaging, encouragement and education with the public.
In one instance Police received a report of a number of people not social distancing in the St Heliers area shortly before 1pm on Sunday.
Police attended and spoke to people at the beach, who were all in their various bubbles and mainly exercising, and educated them on keeping their distance from others under Alert Level 3 restrictions.
The response was largely positive.
ENDS
Issued by Police Media Centre