MPS officers asked for ‘hard facts’ on spitting frequency
Officers are being urged to record every time they are spat at in a bid to roll out protective equipment more widely in the capital.
The Metropolitan Police Federation has launched a campaign asking members to gather evidence of the danger they face from spitting and the frequency of such assaults.
Chair Ken Marsh intends to present these findings to Metropolitan Police Service Commissioner Cressida Dick to convince her to back a wider deployment of spit guards in London.
The MPS currently offers spit guards to officers in custody suites but the equipment has not been made available to every officer on the front line.
Thirty-seven UK forces currently issue spit guards to protect their personnel.
At the Police Federation of England and Wales conference in May, Home Secretary Sajid Javid promised to raise the issue of spit guard deployment with Ms Dick.
Mr Marsh said: “Being spat at on duty is a disgusting assault. Anecdotally we know it is happening too often but we need to be able to take the evidence, the numbers, to the commissioner.
“We need the hard facts. And we would urge all officers to report how often they are spat at on duty – even if it doesn’t make contact with you. We need to show how big this problem is.”
