Crackdown pledged after paramedic’s attackers duck jail

PENALTIES for thugs who badly hurt emergency services workers are to be toughened as it emerged an average of one paramedic is abused every 50 hours in Victoria.

PENALTIES for thugs who badly hurt emergency services workers are to be toughened as it emerged an average of one paramedic is abused every 50 hours in Victoria.

The Herald Sun has learned the Andrews Government is considering removing non-custodial Community Corrections Orders as an alternative to prison terms for criminals who seriously injure police, firefighters, and paramedics.

And a legal provision under which offenders can avoid mandatory minimum penalties if “special reasons” exist is already under review.

ANGER RISES AS PARAMEDIC BASHERS WALK FREE

WOMEN PLEAD GUILTY TO BASHING PARAMEDIC

AMBOS CALL FOR GREATER SECURITY

The fresh crackdown follows outrage over a judge’s ­decision on Tuesday to quash jail terms for two women who attacked a paramedic, breaking his foot, back in April 2016.

Amanda Warren, 31, and Caris Underwood, 20, both drunk, punched and kicked ­paramedic Paul Judd as he attended a patient in Reservoir.

Their prison terms were replaced with CCOs after County Court judge Barbara Cotterell said that jailing them would “achieve little”.

Mr Judd told the Herald Sun the sentences were an insult.

Paramedic Paul Judd was punched and kicked as he attended a patient in Reservoir. Picture: David Crosling

An x-ray of paramedic Paul Judd’s foot after the attack. Picture: Supplied

“I felt like I had a dagger put in to me by the judge when she looked me straight in the eye and said to me, ‘I’m sorry, I wish there was more I could do’,” Mr Judd said.

“I have been pushed, I’ve been shoved, yelled at, sworn at, I’ve had a knife pulled, guns pulled over the last 40 years.

“The line in the sand has to be drawn,” he said.

Ambulance Victoria boss Tony Walker said the ruling had sparked widespread anger. Paramedics have scribbled “it’s not OK to assault paramedics” on their ambulances.

The case called into further question the effectiveness of mandatory minimum sentences, such as six months’ jail for assaulting an emergency services worker and 10 years for a fatal one-punch attack.

The first of these was introduced in 2014, but the Herald Sun understands no one has yet received either sentence.

Health Minister Jill Hennessy said exemptions to the penalties would be tightened: “Ultimately, we want accountability for those who are violent towards paramedics.”

Amanda Warren. Picture: Nicole Garmston

Caris Underwood. Picture: AAP

Paramedics have scribbled ‘it’s not OK to assault paramedics’ on their ambulances.

The attack on Mr Judd was one of 234 on paramedics in 2016; last year, there were 150, and an average of 14 reports of aggression during call-outs each day. A paramedic is verbally or physically abused every 50 hours, and violence is now so bad they increasingly retreat or refuse to treat patients without police back-up.

Last year, there were almost 3000 charges laid for assaults on emergency services workers, most of them against police, according to the Crime Statistics Agency.

Matt Cronin, whose teenage son Pat’s one-punch killer avoided the mandatory term over the 2016 killing, said the mandatory sentencing laws simply did not work.

“Lawyers are masters of manipulating the law,” he said.

[e-mail]