Assaulting Police Should Always Lead To Jail

Prison sentences should be mandatory for assaults that cause injury to emergency services workers, according to South Yorkshire Police Federation.

New figures show that 22,421 police officers were injured through ‘an intentional or unintentional assault’ last year.

The Government figures for the past financial year also reveal that, on 391,202 occasions, police officers needed to use force to protect themselves.

South Yorkshire Police Federation Chair Steve Kent said: “The only way that you’re going to start to turn this around is to give mandatory sentences for any assaults involving injuries on police officers or emergency service workers across the board – they get a mandatory prison sentence, because that’s a headline, that’s a buzzword, and then it’s in people’s mindsets.

“They’ll think: ‘If I punch this cop, if I punch this paramedic, if I punch this nurse and they get a black eye, I’m going to prison.’ That is the culture that needs to change, because there’s absolutely no doubt that people are more willing to carry out assaults on officers at the minute.”

Steve said that in South Yorkshire they were getting these offenders into court, but that tough sentences weren’t being handed down.

He said: “In South Yorkshire, I am massively reassured by the rates of charging and the rates of outcomes for officer assaults. They’re very, very high, percentage-wise. So the issue isn’t that we’re not getting these people into court, the issue then comes into court where the sentences are just not giving that clear signposting.”