Police Association backs laws to jail emergency service attackers

New laws that would hit people who attack police, firefighters or paramedics with lengthy jail sentences have won the support of the police union.

Laws that would see people who attack emergency service workers face up to 15 years in jail have won the immediate backing of the state’s Police Association.

The laws, to be introduced by Labor’s Lee Odenwalder next month, would create a specific offence for assaults on emergency service workers.

Lee Odenwalder.

Mr Odenwalder said the legislation sent “a clear message” to the community.

Police, ambulance officers and emergency workers need to know they are protected by the law, every time they put on their uniforms,” he said.

Police Association president Mark Carroll — who was scathing of Attorney-General Vickie Chapman’s decision to increase the maximum penalty from two to five years as “weak and ineffectual” — urged the Government to support Labor’s proposal.

“This is a much higher penalty regime, but what is also positive is it’s modern legislation to deal with the modern reality of policing, that we are assaulted on a daily basis at work,” he said.

Ms Chapman said she had yet to study Mr Odenwalder’s laws in detail.