The liberals wring their hands, but you should get life for killing a copper

HAD everything gone according to plan, Lissie Harper would be getting ready to celebrate her third Christmas as a married woman, husband andrew at her side. They might even have started a family by now, who knows? However, life didn’t work out the way they hoped.

Her dreams were shattered when PC andrew Harper, the man she had been in love with since she was a schoolgirl, was killed responding to a burglary in august 2019, just a month after they married. Further horror was to follow when Lissie had to sit in court, watching when her husband’s trio of killers giggled as they were given lighter sentences for manslaughter, rather than murder.

Since the trial she has, with the backing of the Police Federation, campaigned for tougher sentences for those found guilty of killing police officers and other first responders.

And her demands, that the killing of 999 workers in the line of duty should be punished with a mandatory life sentence, has succeeded. Harper’s Law will apply to any killer of an on-duty police officer, fireman, paramedic or prison officer — and anyone who kills medics providing NHS care.

THe change is expected to make it on to the statute book early next year via an amendment to the Police, Crime, Sentencing and Courts Bill. In the daily Mail earlier this week, dominic Raab wrote that ‘we all owe a debt of gratitude to our dedicated emergency workers. I want them to know we’ve got their backs’.

Indeed we do. But not everyone sees it like that. Some liberals wring their wet hands in dismay at this change. a two-tier justice system, you say? No thanks. Look at the utter state the police is in, they argue.

On TV this week, one Left-wing comedian pointed out that not all cops were good cops anyway. Look at Wayne Couzens. Look at the Met officers who shared photos of two murdered sisters, referred to them as ‘dead birds’ and were this week found guilty of gross misconduct and await sentencing.

I always feel duty bound to point out that I come from a police family and know, like so many of us do, that these bad cops are the terrible exception rather than the rule.

Their blue crimes are despicable, while serious questions remain about the Met being fit for purpose.

How could a rapist and murderer such as Couzens hide in plain sight in their ranks for so long? as a firearms officer, he would have undergone regular psychological profiling, yet no red flags were ever raised.

However the police, in particular, need our support more than ever right now. The pandemic has been hard on NHS workers, but it has taken a toll on the police, too.

From the first Covid case until now, they have been in the front line dealing with the rough stuff; charged not just with maintaining law and order for an increasingly belligerent and fed up public, but also attempting to interpret and impose chaotic changes of scrappy Government policy and new laws made on the hoof.

The result of this has been a major increase in attacks on police. There were nearly 40,000 assaults on officers— including deliberate coughing and spitting — in the year following the start of the Covid outbreak in March 2020. That’s a 20 per cent rise on the previous year. according to official figures there were more than 100 assaults on police in england and Wales every day.

If we want a safer society it stands to reason that we have to make those who protect us safer. emergency workers put themselves in harm’s way on a daily basis. The very least we can do is offer them a shield of extra protection that the deterrent of stiffer sentencing might bring.

I long for a future where anyone involved in the killing of a British police officer would be terrified of the judicial punishment they might receive, instead of laughing about it in court. already there have been complaints that it is wrong to say that the lives of police and emergency workers are worth more than the lives of the general public — but that is not what Harper’s Law is about.

SOMeONe has to walk into the burning building, confront the killer, deal with the violence and the mentally unstable, accept that they are a target simply for being in uniform. Responders are often called upon to put the safety of the public before their own and I feel that the size of that sacrifice should be acknowledged and protected — because a public sector salary and pension doesn’t even begin to cover it.

Because of the terrible behaviour of three lawless young men, newlyweds andrew and Lissie Harper didn’t even make it to their honeymoon.

Now the lasting irony is that while the men who killed her husband will be out of jail in a few years, she is the one who has been left with the life sentence. and that is not right.

She has done her bit to make things better — now it’s up to the rest of us.