Lack of respect driving assaults on police officers, says Scottish Superintendents Association president

Last year there were 55,954 assaults on police officers in the UK; 6,702 of those were in Scotland. This is an average of more than 150 assaults a day in the UK, or an officer being assaulted every ten minutes.

Chief Superintendent Rob Hay says there is no single solution for reducing the number of assaults on officers: “It is the very definition of a multi-factor problem.”

“First, let’s make sure we’re not sending police officers to calls where they’re a walking target,” he said. “If someone’s having a mental health crisis, sometimes the police uniform itself can be interpreted in a confrontational way and can be a trigger for people to be violent.

“There should always be a proper risk assessment and the most appropriate service should respond.

“Also, more broadly, there has definitely been a decline in the level of respect for policing. That’s sometimes driven by the scandals that we’ve all been affected by, and sometimes driven by international events.

“We need to reconnect with the public again and get much more public support.”

Also, Chief Supt Hay says a lot of the mobile-phone footage that members of the public put on social media is “very selectively edited to cast police officers in the worst possible light”.

“That doesn’t help this issue,” he said. “All UK forces need to be more agile in the release of footage, to allay concerns and mitigate community impact.

“It’s also important that police officers are properly supported by their leadership team if they use force in an appropriate way, in accordance with their training and policy. After all, the scrutiny of police officers has never been higher, so officers need to be confident that they can go and use the training that we give them.”

Chief Supt Hay says forces’ need to invest in the quality of training and to understand that’s exactly what it is: an investment.

“So, if they’re concerned about releasing an officer for a few hours’ training, that could actually save the officer from being off sick for three months,” he added. “Understanding that this is an escalating threat, with increasing frequency and intensity of violence used against officers, this must lead to an increase in the quality and frequency of our training response.

“We’ve got some really good data in Scotland that shows that, once you’ve had your training, the likelihood of you being assaulted drops significantly, but it starts to increase the further you get away from the day you were trained.

“That speaks to the perishability of skills. And it’s not just the safety of officers we’re talking about here, it’s also the safety of suspects. If officers are competent and confident, they can use their skills to bring an incident to a safe resolution much quicker.”