SPIT hoods should be \u201con the belt of every police officer in Essex and in every custody suite\u201d, the new Chairman of Essex Police Federation has said.<\/p>\n
Steve Taylor, Chairman Elect of Essex Police Federation, said that speaking from experience, he would rather be hit in the face than spat at.<\/p>\n
He added that in the last 12 months, 30 police officers have been spat at in Essex.<\/p>\n
\u201cI want to see spit hoods rolled out. I think it\u2019s a valuable piece of personal protective equipment,\u201d said Steve.<\/p>\n
He said: \u201cSixteen years I\u2019ve served on the streets in uniform, as a constable and a sergeant, and during that time, I\u2019ve been spat at during, before and after the arrest of a suspect. As have many of my colleagues. It is very, very unpleasant.<\/p>\n
\u201cI don\u2019t think I am alone in saying that I\u2019d rather take a punch to the face than have someone spit at me.\u201d<\/p>\n
Police officers who are spat at face weeks of uncertainty and medical testing to see if they have been infected.<\/p>\n
Steve added: \u201cIf some of that spit gets into the eye or the nose or the mouth, there is a danger of transmission of contagious disease. It is not knowing until that person is checked, until colleagues go through a course of preventative medication and blood tests to rule out the transmission of anything, there\u2019s a period of concern and fear not only for the officer but also for their family.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe are policed by consent in our country and it makes us one of the finest police forces in the world, in my humble view, and one of the main tenets of that policing by consent is that the public are the police, and the police are the public.<\/p>\n
\u201cAll police officers are is members of the public who are employed full-time to keep the peace and to protect the people and their property. Therefore, is it acceptable for you to be spat at in the street? No, it most certainly is not, therefore why do people think it is acceptable for a police officer to be spat at?\u201d<\/p>\n
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SPIT hoods should be \u201con the belt of every police officer in Essex and in every custody suite\u201d, the new Chairman of Essex Police Federation has said. Steve Taylor, Chairman\u2026 read more →<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":153,"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\/3122"}],"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=3122"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/essexfedfocus.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3122\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3147,"href":"https:\/\/essexfedfocus.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3122\/revisions\/3147"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/essexfedfocus.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/153"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/essexfedfocus.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=3122"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/essexfedfocus.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=3122"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/essexfedfocus.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=3122"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}