PC calls for tougher sentences for police assaults

12 May 2025

PC Mike Poultney says officers must also be able to inform the courts of the physical and psychological impact assaults have on them.

Mike’s comments come after he was the victim of a vicious assault that left him with damage to his eye, as well as black eyes and cuts to his face, lips and inside his mouth.

Following a few days in custody, his attacker walked free from court with a suspended sentence and was ordered to pay a £100 victim surcharge.

Mike said: “I am deeply angered and upset by the result. The idea that the damage he did to me, physically and mentally, for just carrying out my duty was worth £100 and him then be able to walk free on a suspended sentence is outrageous.”

PC Mike Poultney soon after he was assaulted.

Mike, 37, was assaulted on Saturday 8 March as he arrested his attacker for an earlier incident in which he had assaulted his own mother.

‘He tried to gouge out my eyes’

“As soon as I got out of my car his response was to get aggressive and go for me,” he said. “I tried to grab hold of him and he punched me repeatedly in the face.

“He then tried to gouge my eyes out and grabbed hold of my face. I took him off his feet and managed to pin him to the floor.

“It all happened within 60 seconds, but that 60 seconds was sufficient for him to hit me enough times to split the inside of my lip and my top lip, scratch my face, gouge my eye and give me a big lump on the front of my head.

Black eyes

“Later on, I discovered that he’s damaged the gel in my right eye. As a result, I had black eyes that came out over the space of the next seven days and kept getting worse.”

The attacker admitted assaulting Mike and a colleague, but denied assaulting his mother.

He was remanded in custody but, at a later bail hearing, changed his plea for the attack on his mother, and the case was heard there and then by magistrates.

“The frustration comes from the fact I wasn’t able to present what happened to me,” Mike said.

“I took photographs of my face over the seven days afterwards to show how the bruising came out, because the initial photographs submitted on the day didn’t show how bad it got.

“I never got to do a victim personal statement to explain the impact it had.”

Mike said he has been assaulted in the job ‘a number of times’ and, while the victim surcharge has never felt like ‘an appropriate outcome’, it has not really bothered him as much as it did with this incident.

‘How do you explain this to your toddler?’

He said: “One of the main reasons now being the fact I’m a father and that has very much been at the forefront of my mind.

“When I saw my son for the first time on the Monday after, he was in a bad mood in the morning and was calling out for my wife.

“When I went to see him, he got even more distressed and it played on my mind and upset me.

“Was it simply because he wanted his mum? Was it more? Was it that Daddy’s face was all bruised and scratched and battered?

“How can I explain to a toddler that it’s nothing to be scared of?

“When this happens again and he’s older, how do I explain to him that Daddy is fine and it was a bad man who did it and not to worry because it won’t happen to him?

Bruising

“Ultimately, I come to work to help people. We go through so much in the incidents that we deal with, and all we ask for in return is to go home again and be there to look after our own families.”

Mike said that, following the incident, people repeatedly commented on the bruising.

“Colleagues, friends, family, victims and suspects I have dealt with since, even random members of the public in the coffee shop when I stopped to get a drink on a dog walk, all noticed and passed comment or asked questions,” he explained.

“I repeatedly had to explain in brief or tell the whole tale again. On the whole, I know it’s been people who are genuinely caring and have offered reassurance and been nice about it, but all I wanted to do was move on and not talk about it. It had consumed enough of my time and thoughts.”

Mike, who is based on Worcester response team and has been an officer for six years, said the attack was not an isolated incident.

He told of a colleague who had had their nose ‘popped’ in an attack, while another was ‘stabbed in the head with a fork’.

Criminal justice

Mike is now urging the courts and wider criminal justice system to see the people behind police uniforms and to support them when dealing with those who attack them.

The Police Federation of England and Wales has had a long-running Protect the Protectors campaign, part of which calls for tougher sentences for those who assault police officers.

Mike said: “These sentences aren’t supporting frontline officers who are facing this daily.”

Talking of the offenders, he asked: “Does he think twice about assaulting the next officer that goes to deal with him? What happens to him is another £100 fine that he can't pay and won't pay anyway. It’s just not a deterrent.”

Mike wrote a personal and emotional email to his line managers following the sentencing hearing, explaining his anger and frustration.

He described the process as ‘cathartic’, particularly as he had not been able to submit a victim personal statement.

‘It’s not our job to be assaulted’

That email has since been read by senior leaders in the Force including Deputy Chief Constable Rachel Jones who visited Mike to discuss his concerns.

It has been raised at a chief officers’ meeting and it is Mike’s understanding that Chief Constable Richard Cooper intends to raise it in his meetings with members of the wider criminal justice system.

Mike said: “The courts are too quick to say that it’s only a cop who has been assaulted. It’s not our job to be assaulted.

“And they’re missing the fact that I am also a son, a husband, a father. Those things are more important than my job.

“If I, as a cop, caused somebody the level of harm he caused me, I’d be in prison. We’re held to a higher account, but we don’t have higher levels of support.”

Diary

December 2025