19 Met Police officers assaulted everyday with nearly half resulting in injury and 5 officers a day are victims of hate abuse.

As you go to work today, imagine 19 of your colleagues being assaulted, with nearly half of those resulting in some form of injury. Then imagine 5 of them being victims of hate abuse for just doing their job. These figures released from the Met Police show the level of assault and abuse officers working across the capital face on a daily basis.

Mental health concerns have also increased by 30%, as officers face the toughest conditions imaginable.

Let us turn the clock back ten years. We have many operational police stations across London, we have more experienced officers working across London, we have better working conditions such as canteen facilities for officers, we have officers attend burglary and car theft and actually doing the job they are supposed to do.

Now let us turn the clock forward and arrive to today. We have very few operational police stations, we have a lot less experienced officers on our streets, we have poor working conditions for officers including no canteen facilities and little time for meal breaks, we struggle to have whole teams out to cover BCU’s and due to the shortage in numbers, we all know officers have not attended burglaries or car thefts much to the public’s anger.

Another important factor is the the level of work officers across the capital are facing. We know that Met officers respond to one in three mental health related calls as there isn’t anyone else to attend. Officers have also told us that they have run unwell members of the public to hospital, as ambulances struggle to answer calls with wait times as long as eight or more hours. We know officers do social working roles, helping those in need across the community.

We must then take into account the rise in violent crime across London, with knife crime being an epidemic. Officers are always the first on scene and are faced with horrifying situations such as watching a child lose his life on the street and knowing that despite doing everything they can, nothing can save their life. Heartbreaking for our society, traumatic for the family and also for the officer who will remember how they tried so hard to save that child’s life and witnessed the child’s mother in unbearable grief.

There are also daily protests across the capital that the Met must deal with and have been doing so. We have seen the glue sticking protesters pop up like an unwanted jack in the box across London, not communicating with the Met to inform them of where or when they will protest and also revelling in being taken away by officers. We all agree that protests are allowed and of course much needed, but not communicating before hand with our police force has meant thousands of officers have been used, when their need is very much at the BCU. They have also taken up a great deal of time by glueing themselves to a variety of places that has meant officers had to safely remove them. A time consuming process.

Police forces are being told on a daily basis what they should be doing but not given the resources to do it. Police officers are repeatedly being told they should be doing this and that and once again not provided with the finances to be able to do this. Finger pointing is done daily, but no support whatsoever is done to support forces and their officers.

There are 34,500 officers in the Met, most joined to make a difference across our community and actually do that. They get targeted daily, they get assaulted daily and they are victims of hate abuse daily. So many of them do such invaluable work across London, make vital contributions to our communities and are there when we need them.

Being a police officer is one of the most important roles in our society and has become the toughest, most abused and undervalued.

Let us spare a thought today for our frontline officers who attend when the public need them, who have terrible working conditions, who suffer abuse and assaults, and ultimately without any hesitation, put their life on the life for us. They will also be the ones going home knowing a child has died in front of their very own eyes from a stabbing and they did everything they could to save that child.