Are record level of assaults on officers making them leave policing?

13 September 2024

The police service needs to investigate whether there is a correlation between officer assaults and the number of people leaving the service in their first five years.

That’s according to Andy Rhodes, Service Director of Oscar Kilo who said a staggering 80% of serious assaults on officers happen when they are in their first five years of service,

Government statistics reveal there are an average of 125 assaults on Police Officers in England and Wales every single day. There were in total 45,907 assaults on police officers last year.

More than 5 assaults on our colleagues every hour of the day. 

Andy told the Superintendents’ Association conference this week that assault data is “highly relevant” when trying to understand why the numbers of people leaving the service early has risen significantly since Covid, up to 6.6% from 3%before the pandemic.

He said: “More people are leaving in their first five years of service and that’s not necessarily a bad thing. Sometimes there’s a healthy turnover rate. If people come into an occupation and it’s not for them that’s not necessarily a problem, but we need to understand it

“80% of serious assaults happens to police officers in the first five years of their service. The data from Op Hampshire is highly relevant about why we have a high turnover rate in the first five years.

“If we can’t understand the data, get the insights from it and support individuals then we’re never going to reduce severe and serious assaults on our staff.”

Andy also said that new recruits into policing were finding it difficult to cope with the transition into shift work and maintaining a healthy work-life balance, with four in 10 saying work strain is affecting their personal life.

He told delegates: “New recruits need to be educated about healthy strategies to cope with adjusting to starting shift work. New recruits coming into policing are entering a very difficult environment – probably one of the most difficult environments to put a new recruit into – so the more we can support them the better.

“We’re looking at building this into education for new recruits about sleep fatigue and recovering. It’s a real opportunity to help people with their work-life balance."

And he reiterated that the Police Covenant was a golden opportunity to make sure the service is properly looking after the welfare of its staff.

He said: “Our job is to encourage culture change and allow the right tools to help people. I would like serious commitment around the Police Covenant and we should seize it as an opportunity because it’s legislating for the stuff that we’re talking about.

“It wouldn’t matter who’s in Government, who the Chief Constable is. It is setting in stone the requirement for us to pay high regard to the health and wellbeing of our people. It’s a huge opportunity for us so we’ve got to grasp it.”