The latest vicious baseball bat attack on a police constable in Hamilton, causing a skull fracture, is the latest in a long line of attacks on police officers. We need to have a zero-tolerance stance for these attacks and bring in minimum mandatory prison time to reflect it, says Darroch Ball co-leader of Sensible Sentencing Trust.

“Our policemen and women put their lives on the line every day and are being increasingly targeted with violent assaults."

“Their duty is to protect the community and we need to ensure we have laws in place that protect them.”

“These assaults against our officers will continue to end in tragedy if we don’t seriously change how we deal with these violent criminals.”

“The ‘Protection for First Responders and Prison Officers’ Bill is currently in front of the justice select committee and seeks to introduce a minimum mandatory six-month prison sentence for anyone who assaults our first responders.”

“There is a perfect opportunity for the government to draw a line in the sand and show our first responders that we back them.”

“Assaults against Police have increased and has started to involve more and more serious assaults and recently more firearms incidents," says Mr Ball.

“We can’t continue to ignore the danger our men and women in uniform are placing themselves in without giving them the backing and confidence that our society won’t continue to allow violent attacks against them to go without severe repercussions.”
 

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