The Singapore Police Force (SPF) issued a statement on Friday evening that a 40-year-old Singaporean woman was earlier arrested on Thursday for voluntarily causing hurt to deter a Police officer from carrying out her duty, insulting two mall staff, and not wearing her mask properly.
SPF shared that it had received a request on Thursday (7 May) at about 2.10pm, for assistance from a crowd management staff deployed by Sun Plaza that a woman was uncooperative and refused to wear her mask properly at the mall.
Preliminary investigations by the police revealed that at about 2pm, the crowd management staff noticed that the woman was not wearing her mask properly when she entered Sun Plaza. Despite repeated requests made by the staff to wear her mask properly, she refused to do so.
The woman also insulted the staff and hurled vulgarities at a security officer who came to assist.
The incident was captured on video and widely circulated online. A video that was posted on Facebook, wrote, “Why still got people not taking social distancing seriously? Still treating it like a joke?”.
According to SPF, the woman started peeling off the address sticker on her identity card when the Police officers requested for her identity. When one of the Police officers tried to stop her, the woman assaulted the Police officer and remained uncooperative. The woman was subsequently arrested by the Police officers and investigations are ongoing.
The offence of voluntarily causing hurt to deter a public servant from carrying out his or her duty under Section 332 of the Penal Code carries an imprisonment term of up to seven years, and shall also be liable to a fine or to caning, provided that in exceptional circumstances imprisonment need not be imposed. The offence of using insulting or abusive language with an intention to cause harassment to another person under Section 3(2) of the Protection from Harassment Act carries an imprisonment term of up to six months or a fine of up to $5,000, or both.
SPF also states that the woman will be investigated for not wearing her mask properly under the COVID-19 (Temporary Measures) (Control Order) Regulations 2020. It is said that the woman has previously been issued a notice of composition of S$300 for not wearing a mask at the same mall on 29 April 2020.
SPF advises everyone to take the circuit breaker measures seriously and that it will not tolerate such blatant disregard of the law and wilful breaches of safe distancing measures.
