Deputy chair Jase Dooley has renewed West Midlands Police Federation’s call for officers to be able to be trained in the use of Taser.

Jase has described as ‘worrying’ figures which show that, on average, just under one third of officers (31 per cent) in the Force were assaulted last year.

Figures from the Office for National Statistics show that there were 2,475 assaults on police officers in West Midlands Police officers, which currently has around 8,000 officers.

Of those 2,475 assaults, 893 resulted in injury.

Last weekend alone, numerous officers were assaulted.

Social media

Jase said: “The numbers are high, which is worrying.”

He said there was a worry among some officers, particularly those young in service, that if they ‘get hands on’ with a suspect ‘the complaints procedures will be coming their way’.

“You see it every day, police officers being filmed and put on social media and vilified for just doing their job,” he said.

“Officers need to use the powers that are given to us under section 3 of the criminal law act and section 117 of PACE, and that is the use of reasonable force in preventing a crime or assisting in the lawful arrest of offenders.

“So, if someone is coming at you with a knife then you’d use a Taser or, in extreme circumstances, a lethal option because it’s life and death.

“If someone comes at you with a blunt instrument the officer has to assess the use of force in seconds and not mull over it for hours the next morning.

“But if someone spits at you, that’s a different level of force. We’re having a lot of people spitting at our members and that is classed as assault with an injury.

Taser

“If those officers had a Taser it would stop most of this, because it’s a huge deterrent.

“It’s an identifiable piece of equipment on the vest that is bright yellow. You can have that distance between the officer and the suspect. The suspect gets a red dot on them – and it has the desired outcome.

“I would say more than 80 per cent of the time people will stop what they’re doing if they have been red dotted with a Taser.

“For me, every frontline officer should have Taser.”

Jase said the Federation branch was working closely with Assistant Chief Constable Mike O’Hara on police assaults, and Chief Inspector Jason Nunn, the Force’s use of force lead.

“The Force is trying its hardest to alleviate these problems,” he said. “They’re trying to find out what the issues are. Is it a training issue, an officer issue, a society issue?”

Criminal justice system

And he reiterated the branch’s call for members to backed up by the wider criminal justice system.

“There doesn’t appear to be a big punishment anymore for assaulting a police officer,” he said.

“If you assault a police officer, there has to be a consequence but, at the moment, there doesn’t seem to be.

“The law was changed recently giving a more harsher punishment but I do not hear of many examples where this crime is dealt with severely. 

“You very rarely hear of someone going to prison for assaulting a police officer, which is very frustrating and our members.”

"If any officers find themselves victims of assault by suspects, they need to raise this to our work place reps,” he added.