Number of assaults on Kent Police officers is still too high, says Federation

23 July 2019

Despite tougher sentencing laws for assaults on emergency service workers, attacks on officers have still continued to rise, Kent Police Federation have said.

Deputy Conduct and Performance Lead Neil Mennie was speaking to BBC Radio Kent and said: “Unfortunately these (assaults) are not uncommon, there’s a degree of variance in the type of assaults but unfortunately, we do see, on a fairly regular basis, some fairly horrible assaults on officers and the recent figures are still too high.

“We’re into double digits per week of assaults on officers and it’s really not a good situation.”

Last year, 1,234 Kent Police officers were assaulted on duty, equating to nearly 24 a week.

And despite sentencing laws for assaults on emergency service workers doubling from six to twelve months, Kent have still charged 435 people for these type of assaults in the past eight months, according to the BBC.

However, Neil says that despite the numbers, the new law marks some progress.

“It’s a step in the right direction and we were very pleased with the new law”, he said.

“Obviously we present matters to the court, we gather the evidence we charge people with offences, but the outcome is a matter for the court, the sentencing and admonishment is down to the court.

“We would like to see results that are commensurate with the type of assault”, Neil added.

One officer who has felt the full effects of an assault is Inspector Tristan Stevens, who has been attacked several times on duty, most recently having the top of his finger dislocated and on another occasion suffering from chemical burns when he was sprayed in the face by a can of Lynx deodorant.

As a result, Tristan was another police officer taken away from the frontline.

“That has a knock-on effect to the communities they police”, he said.

In order for the problem to be dealt with properly, Neil ultimately feels sentencing may need to be looked at again.

“We would like to get to a position of that the prospect of assaulting an emergency service worker results in a sentence that is significant enough to make them think before doing it in the first place.”