Hampshire Police Federation want tougher sentencing for assaults on officers

Zoe Wakefield, chair of Hampshire Police Federation, said home secretary Priti Patel's reassurance about tougher laws do not go far enough.

Sergeant Wakefield wants courts – judges and magistrates – to act on the strengthened laws which would see the maximum sentence for assault on emergency workers increase to two years.

Higher penalties are already available for more serious attacks, including grievous bodily harm.

There were 1,241 assaults against police officers in Hampshire in 2019/20, figures show. There were 30,000 nationally.

Sgt Wakefield said: ‘The home secretary has increased sentences and has also said that she’s going to monitor sentences.

‘But I’d like to see something more with the judges and the magistrates and the Crown Prosecution Service to make sure that these stronger sentences are actually being dished out in the courts.

‘There’s a lot more work that can be done with officer safety training to try to prevent some of these assaults, but we can’t stop every single assault. If the perpetrators are getting decent sentences and are actually being locked up, officers feel like they are valued and that the assault on them has been taken seriously.

‘Also, the whole time these people are locked up they can’t be assaulting anybody else. They might, when they’re incarcerated, think about not doing it again.

‘But when they’re being given suspended sentences, or not being given a custodial sentence, the deterrent’s not there at all.

‘There’s no point in having the home secretary increasing these sentences if the magistrates and the judges aren’t going to make use of that.’

It comes as chief constable Olivia Pinkney said earlier this year that weaponised Covid spitting was seen every day.

Early in the pandemic defendants were often jailed for doing this, and continue to be now.

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As reported, Ryan Dean, 26, of Elm Grove, Southsea was jailed at Portsmouth Magistrates’ Court for 36 weeks for an attack on police.

Police are shouldering the burden of enforcing lockdown two at at time when the public are seeing their freedoms restricted again.

Sgt Wakefield said people understood the rule of six, but officers were having to keep apace of ever-changing legislation.

She said: ‘It’s hard to keep up with the constant changes. Everyone had got their heads around the rule of six.

‘I think that was one of the simpler rules to understand and it was going reasonably well.’

She added: ‘We’re quite fortunate in this area – our infection rates, even though they’ve been going up, have been sort of in control.’

Officers are keen to make a difference in the pandemic by helping stop misbehaviour.

‘They want to be a part of it, want to do their bit to help, and want to do their public service in helping the country get through this,' Sgt Wakefield said.

A message from the Editor, Mark Waldron

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