All too often we hear stories about individuals who have assaulted members of the emergency services but who end up getting a ‘punishment’ in court that leaves members of the emergency services family feeling massively let down.
You also tend to always get a small minority of people commenting on these kind of stories sharing their opinion about how police officers getting assaulted is a ‘part of the job’.
Well, if thats your stance then that’s fine – but police officers should at least have confidence that anyone convicted of assaulting a police officer, or any other member of the emergency services, will get sent to prison.
From my own experiences of serving on the thin blue line, I remember dealing with an incident where a young lad had decided to run into a fast food ‘restaurant’ whilst off of his face on drugs.
He armed himself with a large kitchen knife and barricaded himself in the basement of the ‘restaurant’ in the east end of London.
During a stand-off with the male, during which me and 5 of my colleagues tried to subdue the male, I got a knife wound to the leg. Nothing major, but it still hurt.
The male responsible was convicted and sent to prison and I got £500 compensation about a week before going on holiday. Result.
And that’s why we, here at Emergency Services News, are always pleased to hear about other stories which end with someone getting sent to prison having been convicted of assaulting a police officer (or anyone else in the emergency services / NHS).
West Midlands Police yesterday shared a story regarding one such assailant who has now been banged up for four years having serious assaulted a police officer.
In a statement on their facebook page, they said:
“A car thief who injured a police officer while resisting arrest has been jailed for nearly four years.
“Liam O’Callaghan, was reported to police by a member of the public, who had seen him with an accomplice trying door handles of parked cars in Cofton Park Drive, Rednal on 31 October 2017.
“Two police officers who attended, spotted the two men and chased them on foot.
“The accomplice was stopped by one of the officers and co-operated.
“O’Callaghan however, struggled so violently with the officer who was trying to detain him, that he dislocated the officer’s arm and fractured his collar bone.
“O’Callaghan was arrested shortly afterwards by a dog handler, after a police dog got hold of his thigh.
“Detective Constable Darren Lennox, of Bournville CID, said: “The officer was held in a choke hold, preventing him from breathing, and still has a lasting injury almost a year on.
“Sadly this was the last shift he ever worked as he took the decision to give up his role with West Midlands Police.
“The community has lost an officer with 15 years of experience under his belt and that is reflected in this lengthy sentence.”
“O’Callaghan, age 30 of Quinton Road West, Quinton, was sentenced to eight months for theft from a motor vehicle to run concurrently with 43 months for assaulting a police officer after pleading guilty at Birmingham Crown Court on 20 August.”
So owing to the severity of his injuries, the police officer who was the victim of O’Callaghan’s violence quit the job.
And who can blame him?
In a climate where police officers salaries have been cut, many people on the thin blue line question the motivation for putting their lives in danger for the salaries which they get paid.
We hear from such people all of the time, via our main facebook page.
If, however, we made the decision as a decent and forward-thinking society that career criminals should remain locked up, then not only would crime go down, but assaults on emergency services would go down as well.
Why? well, because, from experience of actually policing the streets, the same group of people within any given area are responsible for around 80-90% of the crime in the same area.
Ask ANY police officer how many times they have arrested the same suspect and they will tell you ‘a lot’.
The thing is, too many people, far removed from the frontline of crime and the causes of crime, think that criminals are the ‘victims’ of circumstance or are the victims of a society that has let them down.
And whilst this may be the situation in some cases, the vast majority of the time the aforementioned well-intentioned, although misguided, sentiment does not apply.
Some people, choose a life of crime because they enjoy it.
It doesn’t matter what anyone says to them, or how many people stick up for them, they are criminals because they enjoy the buzz of it.
In my own opinion, someone convicted of three crimes should go to jail for a minimum of ten years.
When I was a teenager, I got into trouble quite a bit for a variety of reasons – not least because my mum and step-dad hated each other, and home life was an absolute nightmare.
I got arrested twice – once for assault, and once for aiding and abetting. Not because of my home life but because I was a little s__t.
But, aged 14, I remember sitting in the Police car on the way to the police station thinking: ‘there is more to life than this’.
And so, I ended up serving in the military, serving in the police, volunteering on the lifeboats and starting up several businesses.
No-one helped me because I didn’t need help. I wanted to change the direction of my life, so I did. You have to WANT to change in order to become a changed person.
the armed force and the police gave me a second chance, because they knew that yes, as a kid growing up, you do make mistakes which you learn from.
I certainly learnt from my mistakes and that’s why I am saying that career criminals, criminals who decide to return to a life of crime, having been arrested or cautioned, are choosing their path in life.
We need to stop looking for people to blame and start taking responsibility for our own actions and become someone who our children can look up to rather than be ashamed of.
Our emergency services would not face the repeated dangers which they do, if more people decided to be a good person, rather than a bad one.
We live in hope…
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