ASSAULTS against police officers and other emergency workers should lead to an automatic jail sentence, the Chair of South Yorkshire Police Federation has said.<\/p>\n
Steve Kent was speaking after new Government figures revealed there were 425,721 incidents in the past financial year where police officers needed to use force to protect themselves. That is up 9% on the previous year.<\/p>\n
The figures also showed that 19,758 officers were injured in such incidents, and of these, 299 received severe injuries such as a fracture or a deep laceration.<\/p>\n
Steve said: \u201cWe now have a system in place in our force where we get notified of any assault involving injury of officers. We absolutely have seen an increase in that in real terms.<\/p>\n
\u201cThere seems to be an attitude that it\u2019s far more acceptable to assault officers. I think the punishment isn\u2019t there, and I have campaigned, and I will continue to campaign, that any assault involving injury should carry an automatic custodial sentence for an emergency service worker: paramedics, cops and firefighters. Everybody.<\/p>\n
\u201cBut I also think that the public and the media rhetoric towards policing is almost giving the undesirable members of our public the mindset to assault officers \u2013 we\u2019re seen as easy targets. Cops need some backing right now, and we shouldn\u2019t all be lambasted for the actions of a tiny few.\u201d<\/p>\n
He continued: \u201cOur charging rate in this force for assaults on police is actually exceptionally high. Credit due to the force on that. What is absolutely failing is when the courts are dealing with it at the end.<\/p>\n
\u201cOne of our Reps has made a suggestion, which we\u2019re going to uphold. We are going to pledge that any officer assaulted on duty, if they want a Federation Rep to be with them at court as a support mechanism, we will do that.<\/p>\n
\u201cIf an officer gets a broken nose and they\u2019re going to court, they\u2019re a victim of crime and we will get a Rep there if they want one. A lot of our officers now are so young, they\u2019ve never been to court before, so I think it\u2019s really important that the Federation can make a pledge to support our colleagues in this way.\u201d<\/p>\n