The Police Federation of England and Wales can be proud of its campaigning for tougher sentences for those who attack police officers.
That’s the message from Glyn Pattinson, the secretary of the Federation’s Staffordshire branch, as he questioned claims that stiffer penalties aren’t effective in reducing assaults.
Glyn said: “The Federation has long campaigned for tough sentences to be imposed on those who attack our members and we can be proud of our work, which has resulted in changes in the new Police, Crime, Sentencing and Courts Act.
“Our members are extraordinary people doing a unique job – but they’re also mums and dads, daughters and sons, wives and husbands, and they don’t deserve to go to work with the threat of violence being used against them.
“They need the support of society – and that includes the criminal justice system – to get the message across that assaults on them are unacceptable and that anyone convicted of such an attack can expect a jail term.”
Glyn’s comments follow the publication of a report by the charity Transform Justice ‘Protect the protectors? Do criminal sanctions reduce violence against police and NHS staff?’.
The report states it takes a closer, evidence-based look at increased penalties for assaults against emergency workers and demonstrates the ineffectiveness of this approach on any level.
Steve Hartshorn, chair of the Police Federation of England and Wales, took part in a panel discussion to coincide with the report’s launch which asked: ‘Will harsher sanctions reduce assaults on police and NHS workers?’
Asked of his personal experience of officers being assaulted when on duty, Steve said: “I have been assaulted countless times and, to go back to when I first started as a new officer in 1995, there was an ethos then that it was part of the job.
“It was in the early 2000s I think and, there was a court case where a judge basically reaffirmed that it was part the job to get assaulted but it never felt right because everyone has a right to go to work and to be treated properly. We accept that at times policing can be a contact sport, certainly if you are a frontline officer dealing with the public.
“It’s the minority of the public that cause these assaults on officers and it does leave lasting effects on police officers.”
