A spokesperson for the Leicestershire Police Federation has said that it is “absolutely disgusting” that the Crown Prosecution Service has dropped a case where an officer was seriously assaulted and left concussed.
The CPS said it was “not in the public interest” to pursue the case. The Leicestershire officer who had been assaulted only found out over email that the case had been dropped.
Leicestershire Police Federation Chairman Adam Commons said:
“I am furious. The CPS has absolutely no right to make a decision of this magnitude without speaking to the officer and either explaining their rationale or taking any further information into consideration.
“This smacks of a ‘can’t be bothered’ attitude, and there is no place for this in the criminal justice system. Our police officers are the heroes that people call to protect them, and yet there is no protection for them when they are viciously assaulted.”
The incident happened in April this year when the officer was searching for a high-risk missing person.
When the officer located the missing person and tried to detain them, as there were serious concerns over their welfare, the individual punched the officer twice to the side of the head and then struggled during the arrest.
After the incident, the officer began to feel sick and dizzy and attended hospital, where they were diagnosed with a concussion and a broken finger from the struggle.
Adam continued: “Police officers do not go to work to be assaulted; they do their job to protect our communities and bring people to justice.
“What message does it send to the country when our protectors are ignored?”
A spokesperson for the CPS said:
“No police officer should be subjected to violence, which is why the CPS deals robustly and appropriately with those who commit offences against them.
“This case involved a vulnerable child under-16 with no previous convictions who fully admitted to what they did and is willing to work with local youth offending services to address their behaviour.
“As a result, the CPS decided the best course of action was a youth conditional caution.
“We sent a letter to the victim explaining how we came to this decision. We accept our first contact with them could have been clearer and are working to improve how we communicate with victims in future cases.”
The revelation comes just days after a Metropolitan Police officer was found not guilty of causing death by dangerous driving following an incident in 2016 after the vehicle he was pursuing mounted the pavement and killed a ten-year-old boy and his aunt.
23-year-old Joshua Dobby fled from the police in a stolen car and was driving at speeds of up to 60 mph in a 20 mph zone when he lost control of the stolen vehicle and struck his victims.
Dobby mounted the pavement and hit the ten-year-old child actor and his aunt in Penge, southeast London, on 31st August 2016. A third child also involved in the terrifying crash sustained serious injuries.
For the last six years, PC Edward Welch, 34, maintained his innocence and claimed that he had been trying to protect the public when Dobby decided to risk the lives of innocent members of the public when he fled from the police in a stolen vehicle.
Dobby – a career criminal – had already been found guilty of the manslaughter of Makayah Dermot and Rozanne Cooper.
It took a jury less than two hours to find PC Welch not guilty of two counts of causing death by dangerous driving, one count of causing serious injury by dangerous driving, and one count of dangerous driving.
Meanwhile, a West Midlands Police officer will spend Christmas behind bars after he pushed a suspect after responding to a panic alarm that had been activated on a bus.
The suspect, who had been uncooperative with the police, fell over after being pushed, causing a minor cut to his leg.
PC Neville Bridgewood, 39, was found guilty of assault by a Magistrate following a two-day trial at Birmingham Magistrates’ Court on 1st November.
The officer was one of several officers who responded to a panic alarm on a bus outside Bilston bus station on 26th September last year.
In Leicestershire Police alone, 893 officers were assaulted in the past financial year.
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The CPS is not fit for purpose and should either be radically overhauled or disbanded and charging decisions handed back to the police, which is where they belong.
Equally, the whole judicial and sentencing guidance regime needs to be either made to work properly or scrapped, leaving it to magistrates and judges to hand down appropriate sentences. At the same time, woke judges should be forcibly retired.
Bramshill needs to be shut and woke senior officers retired to make way for those with practical, street experience. The policy of only recruiting graduates must cease at once. It does not work, merely ensuring that the force rots from the bottom up as well as the top down.
For that we need a government with some sense. Neither main party has any, Labour merely being even further left and madder than the Tories. Start looking at the new kids on the block like Reform, now according to one poll, the third party in British politics.
Clearly a Reform political party broadcast.