7 March 2025

Hundreds of UK police officers injured in deliberate car-ramming

“It is never acceptable to assault police officers”, the Chair of Dorset Police Federation has said, after new figures showed that hundreds of UK police officers were injured in deliberate car-ramming incidents last year.

According to a Freedom of Information request, last year 244 officers reported injuries after being involved in incidents where police vehicles were deliberately rammed. This is up from the figures in 2023 (219 officers injured) and 2022 (200 officers injured). Thankfully, Dorset Police did not report any such incidents last year.

The research was prompted by a number of reports of incidents – in the media, from some politicians and from the IOPC – stating that an offender was "unarmed", even though that criminal had used their car as a weapon against officers. Many car-ramming incidents happen when people are trying to avoid arrest, and can result in officers being seriously injured.

“This is an area of huge concern regarding the safety of police officers doing their duty,” said Dorset Police Federation Chair James Dimmack.

“We only have to look back to the tragic death of PC Andrew Harper to highlight this. That truly shocking incident resonated across England and Wales. But sadly it is not an isolated incident. I am aware of a Dorset Police officer who suffered in an extremely similar situation to PC Harper. Fortunately the outcome was different, but the officer still suffers with the injuries they sustained and is likely to always be affected.

“It is never acceptable to assault police officers. Every step should be taken to protect officers and suitably punish offenders. We need to champion the contribution of policing and stop trying to demean what is a uniquely challenging and demanding vocation.”

Among the forces reporting high numbers of officers injured by car-ramming were Lancashire Police, Merseyside Police, South Yorkshire Police and South Wales Police. The force with the highest number of car-ramming-related injuries by far was the Police Service of Northern Ireland, with 66 injured officers in 2024.

But 19 out of 48 forces were unable to supply figures of how many of their officers were injured in this way, due to the time and cost of finding the data. This suggests that many forces do not automatically collate or measure these figures, and that the real numbers of injured officers are much higher.

https://www.policeoracle.com/article-library/deliberate-police-vehicle-ramming-a-growing-and-alarming-mode-of-assault/