Simon Power

Wellington, July 6 NZPA - Making attacking police officers and prison guards an aggravating offence is a positive step, says the Police Association, but there needs to be more respect for law enforcers.

Justice Minister Simon Power today said he got Cabinet approval on a proposal to amend the Sentencing Act which would allow judges to take account of those types of assaults when handing out punishments.

"There has been a significant increase in the number and rate of assaults on law enforcement officers over the past five years and the Government has decided it wants to send a message that it is unacceptable," Mr Power said.

Between 2004 and 2009 assaults on police increased by a third, from 1869 to 2481, while serious assaults increased 38 percent, from 298 to 412.

The number of serious assaults on Corrections staff that required hospitalisation or time off work has been decreasing over the past year but between 2004 and 2009 the total number of assaults increased from 151 to 304. Earlier this year Jason Palmer was the first prison guard to be killed in the line of duty at Waikato's Spring Hill Prison.

Police Association vice-president Chris Cahill, a detective senior sergeant, said today's move was positive and the union supported it but he was worried by a trend not to respect police.

"We see as a growing culture around the contempt for police and the rule of law sort of causes these assaults to occur in the first place and that's harder to deal with."

While there were no easy answers, the changes were a step forward.

"We think if the judges and the community agree that police shouldn't be the subject of abuse and threats and spitting and that sort of stuff, then there will be less chance of actually the serious assaults happening.'

There may be a deterrent factor as well, he said. "If people are saying 'this guy got sentenced to three years plus an extra 12 months because he assaulted a police officer', well in general that gets the idea out there that assaulting a police officer was wrong and that wasn't just let go and if that flows through into the lesser types of offending then that's good."

The message needed to be sent that police were not fair game and he was concerned by intense scrutiny of police responses, for example, over high-speed pursuits, rather than blaming criminals for their actions.

Rethinking Crime and Punishment director Kim Workman said while assaults on police had increased so had the population and the number of officers so the rate of assaults was fairly stable.

He said police would get respect by working with all areas of society rather than increased powers or tougher sentences and there was no need for an "alarmist" response.

A focus on less serious assaults in general would give police information that would help reduce incidence.

The Justice Ministry is also looking into how well existing special offences relating to assaults on law enforcement officers work and will report back to the Government by June next year.