Nia Griffith MP has given her full backing to a campaign to improve police officer safety by imposing stronger penalties on people who assault police officers.
The Police Federation has pointed out that last year 23,394 police officers were assaulted whilst undertaking their duty, which amounts to one assault every 22 minutes or 64 per day.
Nia has already attended an event to highlight the issue, and this week Labour is using one of the chances it has to choose the topic for debate to make sure the issue is debated in Parliament, with the aim of persuading the Government to bring in the necessary legislation.
Nia explained,
“ Police officers face all sorts of dangerous situations and risk their own safety in the course of their day to day duties, and these figures show what an alarming number of assaults there are. They deserve to have the full backing of the law if they are assaulted and to be fully supported and protected by the criminal justice system.
One way to try to reduce the number of assaults on police is to bring in tougher penalties against the perpetrators of such assaults and to get out the message that such behaviour will be dealt with very severely. That’s why we are calling for specific changes in the law to bring in stiffer sentences.“