By DAN­I­CA KIR­KA | AS­SO­CI­AT­ED PRESS

LON­DON (AP) — Lon­don po­lice said Tues­day they were in­ves­ti­gat­ing Down­ing Street lock­down par­ties in 2020 to de­ter­mine if U.K. gov­ern­ment of­fi­cials vi­o­lat­ed coro­n­avirus re­stric­tions, putting fur­ther pres­sure on Prime Min­is­ter Boris John­son.

The Met­ro­pol­i­tan Po­lice Ser­vice has launched an in­quiry in­to “a num­ber of events” at Down­ing Street be­cause they met the force’s cri­te­ria for in­ves­ti­gat­ing the “most se­ri­ous and fla­grant” breach­es of COVID-19 rules, Com­mis­sion­er Cres­si­da Dick told the Lon­don As­sem­bly, the cap­i­tal’s lo­cal gov­ern­ment coun­cil.

John­son is fac­ing calls to re­sign amid rev­e­la­tions that he and his staff at­tend­ed a se­ries of par­ties dur­ing the spring and win­ter of 2020 when most so­cial gath­er­ings were banned through­out Eng­land, forc­ing av­er­age cit­i­zens to miss wed­dings, fu­ner­als and birth­days as friends and rel­a­tives died alone in hos­pi­tals. The gath­er­ings are al­ready be­ing in­ves­ti­gat­ed by a se­nior civ­il ser­vant Sue Gray whose re­port, ex­pect­ed this week, will be cru­cial in de­ter­min­ing whether John­son can re­main in pow­er.

John­son has apol­o­gized for at­tend­ing a par­ty in the gar­den of his Down­ing Street of­fices in May 2020 but said he had con­sid­ered it a work gath­er­ing that fell with­in the so­cial dis­tanc­ing rules in place at the time.

In the lat­est rev­e­la­tion, ITV News re­port­ed late Mon­day that John­son at­tend­ed a birth­day par­ty in his Down­ing Street of­fice and lat­er host­ed friends at his of­fi­cial res­i­dence up­stairs in June 2020. His of­fice de­nied that the gath­er­ing vi­o­lat­ed lock­down reg­u­la­tions, say­ing that the prime min­is­ter host­ed a small num­ber of fam­i­ly mem­bers out­doors, which was in line with rules at the time.

Lon­don May­or Sadiq Khan wel­comed the po­lice in­ves­ti­ga­tion.

“The pub­lic right­ly ex­pect the po­lice to up­hold the law with­out fear or favour, no mat­ter who that in­volves, and I have been clear that mem­bers of the pub­lic must be able to ex­pect the high­est stan­dards from every­one, in­clud­ing the Prime Min­is­ter and those around him,” Khan said in a state­ment. “No one is above the law. There can­not be one rule for the gov­ern­ment and an­oth­er for every­one else.”

Po­lice have pre­vi­ous­ly faced crit­i­cism for sug­gest­ing that they wouldn’t in­ves­ti­gate the “par­ty­gate” scan­dal be­cause they don’t rou­tine­ly in­ves­ti­gate his­tor­i­cal breach­es of coro­n­avirus reg­u­la­tions.

But Dick told the as­sem­bly that an in­ves­ti­ga­tion was war­rant­ed in this case be­cause there is ev­i­dence that those in­volved knew or should have known that what they were do­ing was il­le­gal, not in­ves­ti­gat­ing would “sig­nif­i­cant­ly un­der­mine the le­git­i­ma­cy of the law,” and there seems to be no rea­son­able de­fense for the con­duct.

“So in those cas­es, where those cri­te­ria were met, the guide­lines sug­gest­ed that we should po­ten­tial­ly in­ves­ti­gate fur­ther and end up giv­ing peo­ple tick­ets,” she said.