ANYONE who attacks a police officer should be handed an immediate jail sentence, Essex Police Federation has said.<\/p>\n
Police officer assaults have increased by a third in four years, and senior leaders have met with controversy as they grapple with how to deal with them.<\/p>\n
Last month Katy Bourne, the new Chair of the Association of Police and Crime Commissioners, said anyone who hurts an officer should go to prison, \u201cno ifs, no buts\u201d. While Met Commissioner Cressida Dick called for a \u201ctwo strike\u201d rule before a prison sentence is handed down.<\/p>\n
But Essex Police Federation Chairman Steve Taylor said: \u201cOne assault on an officer is one too many. I am firmly of that belief. We have got a number of laws that are designed to protect people. All we need is partners in the criminal justice system to see those laws through.<\/p>\n
\u201cIf prison is the only option for some of these people, then throw them in prison. If we don\u2019t have enough prison spaces then let\u2019s build some more prisons. Just because we don\u2019t have room in our criminal justice system, in the prison service, doesn\u2019t mean those that perpetrate these types of crime should get away with it. And so I think prison for those who assault police officers should be a very real risk they take the moment they use force against an officer.\u201d<\/p>\n
Steve said the onus has to be on the courts to toughen up, after the Federation lobbied for new legislation that came in last year. From November, the Assaults on Emergency Workers (Offences) Act 2018 meant attackers can be jailed for up to 12 months. But offenders are still walking free from the courts after being convicted of attacking officers.<\/p>\n
Steve added: \u201cThe law is there and we\u2019d like to see it used more robustly. Otherwise we will have spent our time lobbying for more law only for it not to be used properly. So let\u2019s use what we\u2019ve got. Let\u2019s try and introduce a credible deterrent to those intent on causing harm to our officers. A part of that deterrent has to be time in prison.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
ANYONE who attacks a police officer should be handed an immediate jail sentence, Essex Police Federation has said. Police officer assaults have increased by a third in four years, and\u2026 read more →<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":74956,"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\/74524"}],"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=74524"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/essexfedfocus.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/74524\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":75117,"href":"https:\/\/essexfedfocus.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/74524\/revisions\/75117"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/essexfedfocus.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/74956"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/essexfedfocus.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=74524"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/essexfedfocus.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=74524"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/essexfedfocus.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=74524"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}