ESSEX Police Federation is throwing its weight behind a campaign which could lead to criminals convicted of killing emergency services workers spending the rest of their lives in jail.<\/p>\n
The ‘Harper’s Law’ campaign has been launched by Lissie Harper, the widow of Thames Valley Police officer PC Andrew Harper, who was killed on duty in August 2019.<\/p>\n
The perpetrators \u2013 Henry Long, Albert Bowers and Jessie Cole\u2013 were convicted of manslaughter but cleared of murder.<\/p>\n
Long was jailed for 16 years, and Bowers and Cole for 13 years.<\/p>\n
Backing Lissie’s campaign, Essex Police Federation Chair Laura Heggie said sentences that match the severity of the crime are needed to act as a proper deterrent.<\/p>\n
Laura said: “It\u2019s an honourable thing that Lissie and Andrew\u2019s family are doing to seek to bring about a change in the law in memory of Andrew.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe fully support the campaign. I signed up to it, and I know many others have. It is needed as a deterrent.<\/p>\n
\u201cEmergency workers are out there trying to help people. It\u2019s the main part of their role, and they shouldn\u2019t run the risk whilst doing that of being killed.<\/p>\n
\u201cIf someone deliberately kills an emergency worker, then they should face the full weight of the law in relation to it.<\/p>\n
\u201cThere are a lot of other jobs that people could choose to go into that are much safer. But people decide to do this, and it sounds like a clich\u00e9 because it\u2019s to make things better and to look after people, but that is the truth, and they do it for the right reasons.<\/p>\n
\u201cThey should be given that protection.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
ESSEX Police Federation is throwing its weight behind a campaign which could lead to criminals convicted of killing emergency services workers spending the rest of their lives in jail. The\u2026 read more →<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":145714,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/essexfedfocus.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/145471"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/essexfedfocus.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/essexfedfocus.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/essexfedfocus.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/essexfedfocus.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=145471"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/essexfedfocus.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/145471\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":145613,"href":"https:\/\/essexfedfocus.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/145471\/revisions\/145613"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/essexfedfocus.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/145714"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/essexfedfocus.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=145471"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/essexfedfocus.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=145471"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/essexfedfocus.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=145471"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}