App to record assaults on officers goes on trial
An app that collects data about assaults on officers is being trialled by the City of London Police.
The National Police Assaults Data app forms part of Operation Hampshire and will eventually be rolled out to all forces in England and Wales. It allows officers to record assaults, signposts supervisors to carry out welfare assessments. It will feed into national figures to support the Police Covenant and help tackle the problem.
The initiative is supported by the College of Policing, the National Police Chiefs’ Council (NPCC) and the national police wellbeing service Oscar Kilo.
“We need a way of gathering police assault data, at a detailed and consistent level,” said Chief Inspector Dave Brewster, an officer from the Metropolitan Police Service who works with Oscar Kilo. “In order for us to learn as an organisation and improve kit, equipment, training and policy, we need to really understand the scale and trends of what’s happening to our colleagues. We want to reduce assaults, lessen the impact of assaults and improve the wellbeing support around them. This is potentially game-changing for policing.”
There were 36,969 assaults reported on police officers in England and Wales in the 2020/21 financial year – an increase of more than 20 per cent on the previous year.
Operation Hampshire, led by PC Barry Jarvis, is a national project providing a comprehensive response to police assaults, incorporating the key themes of supervision, wellbeing, communication, investigation and criminal justice. It has been developed in response to a number of recommendations from the Officer and Staff Safety Review (OSSR), which was published in September 2020.
