Justice disgraced by failure to protect police and 999 crews

WHEN fire crews asked for police help because they feared coming under attack from dangerous yobs, PC John Carr was happy to assist.

He tackled two of the teenage thugs, one of whom he had seen throwing a burning stick at firemen, and dragged them ‘by the scruff of their necks’ to a police van.

Days later he was facing trial for assault, which eventually resulted in a conviction and fine.

He was sacked by now-defunct Strathclyde Police, leading to a major but ultimately unsuccessful campaign to reinstate him.

The boy who Mr Carr saw throwing the burning missile, in Bellsbank, Ayrshire, had the charge against him for attacking the firemen dropped – he got off scot-free.

Back in 2011 Mr Carr, then working as a delivery worker, told me: ‘The “softly, softly” approach of dealing with offenders is doing the general public no good whatsoever.

‘There seems to be a lack of justice for victims of crimes – and it’s always the “bad guys” who are protected by the law.’

Fast-forward five years to last weekend when – with sickening predictability – firefighters across Scotland were attacked with fireworks and stones as they attended Bonfire Night call-outs.

Fire crews dealt with 970 incidents between 4pm and midnight on Saturday and responded to hundreds of calls. They also attended 326 bonfires and looked after revellers at officially organised displays.

But firefighters were attacked at six incidents: in Edinburgh one of them was struck by a rock after being called to a rubbish blaze and in Glasgow a group of youths hurled fireworks at a crew.

Repugnant

A fire engine was damaged by a stone thrown in Ardrossan, Ayrshire, and others were attacked with missiles in Falkirk and Edinburgh. Luckily, there were no serious injuries.

The growing trend for emergency services to come under attack is as baffling as it is repugnant: a window into a terrible sickness afflicting a section of our society.

The warped mindset that lies behind this conduct is regularly condemned by politicians and union leaders but very little changes – and this week a possible explanation emerged.

As the Mail reported yesterday, nearly 80 per cent of those convicted of assaulting, abusing or obstructing police and other emergency workers under ‘get tough’ laws are spared jail in favour of often paltry fines or community service.

Mr Carr’s ordeal exposes an imbalance between the treatment meted out to him and the leniency shown to the twisted yobs who were lobbing the missiles at firefighters.

That imbalance seems to permeate the justice system – there often appears an institutional resistance to using the full force of the law on thugs who terrorise 999 workers.

In one appalling incident this year, onlookers jeered as two police officers were beaten to the ground in the Possilpark area of Glasgow.

Attacker Stuart McCourt escaped jail and was given only a slap-on-the-wrist community service sentence by a sheriff.

The assault was on August 6 at 7.30pm when PCs Paula Lamont and Gordon Innes investigated a strong smell of cannabis coming from a group of men standing outside a solicitor’s office and pub.

Online footage showed McCourt agreeing to be searched – but within seconds he began assaulting the pair and all three ended up on the ground as they tried to restrain him. McCourt lashed out, punching first PC Innes then raining blows and kicks on him and his female colleague, who was knocked to the ground.

A two-minute clip showed the assault continuing as passers-by jeered and filmed it on their phones until back-up arrived. McCourt, 24, was taken away and charged with resisting arrest and assaulting the two constables.

Rank-and-file officers and superintendents later warned charges of police assault were often dropped during plea bargaining. They said thugs were routinely let off with attacking police if they admitted other charges, avoiding costly, time-consuming trials.

Serving officers complain there seems to be a kind of fatalistic acceptance within the system that being beaten up is simply part of the job.

Three men are accused of a hit-and-run attack on two officers in the Knightswood area of Glasgow last month.

According to court papers released last week, policeman Robert Fitzsimmons, 31, dragged his female colleague Deborah Lawson, 30, to safety after she was knocked to the ground by a reversing car.

David McLean, 30, Dayne McCue, 28, and Ryan Gilmour, 24, appeared in court last week charged with attempting to murder the officers and made no plea.

Court papers allege the three men assaulted the officers and reversed the car ‘while both constables were trapped and did drag them backwards and knock them to the ground’.

The incident was a stark reminder of the desperate risks frontline officers face daily.

Abuse

The Scottish Government insists that the ‘law offers special protection to the police and other emergency workers and we fully support our police, prosecutors and courts in holding perpetrators to account’.

This jars with official statistics which show that in the past three years, 10,585 people were convicted under laws introduced to safeguard emergency services personnel from assault, abuse or obstruction – but only 2,290 were jailed.

Some 380 people were given fines of less than £100; fines of up to £5,000 were promised when the Emergency Workers Act was introduced, but in the past three years no one has received a financial penalty of that size under the legislation.

Launching the law in 2005, then Labour finance minister Tom McCabe said that ‘people who deal with emergencies provide an invaluable service to our society.

‘They should be able to go about their work without fear of attack or intimidation and that is why we brought forward this legislation.’

The figures this week – and continued misery of firefighters as fireworks and other missiles rain down upon them – expose those no doubt wellintentioned reassurances more than a decade ago as nothing more than empty rhetoric.

The results of this leniency are clear: a staff survey showed emergency workers face an epidemic of violence and abuse.

Nearly one in three workers – 30 per cent – said they were subjected to physical abuse while attending an alcoholrelated incident in the month before the survey.

Paramedic Jamie McNamee of trade union Unison has faced a number of attacks.

Once he was held against his will for almost an hour and police had to break in to help.

He said: ‘I have been kicked, punched, spat on.’

A paramedic who did not want to be named was stabbed with a dirty needle on duty.

More than two-thirds of those surveyed – 68 per cent – said they had experienced verbal abuse from drinkers.

We owe an enormous debt to the police, fire service and ambulance staff who put their lives at risk, venturing into streets where they know they may come under attack.

They deserve politicians genuinely committed to protecting them – and a justice system that will ensure the thugs who hound them are severely punished.