As if the louts I deal with every day need any more reason to abuse my colleagues and I in the street, wether involved in an incident or not. Apparently, Scotland Yard has issued guidance to Officers instructing them not to arrest people who verbally abuse them in the streets, as the courts don’t convict them and we may have to pay out.
Wait, what? Instructions from above to not arrest people who may have committed offences? I have seen time and time again SMT changing laws and definitions of offences to fit whatever they need to achieve at that time.
Rather than passing this down from above, why not canvass the general public? Do they want the Police Officers of this country to stand there and take verbal abuse from a minority of the community, or step in and begin to retake some of the respect we have lost recently?
How long before ‘Assault PC’ is no longer an offence because we should expect it as a peril of the job? I personally will handcuff for Officer safety, and if this mockery of advice makes its way over to my end I will end up locking up for drunk and disorderly for offences under section 1 of The Attitude Act 2011!
