WA Liberal opposition leader Matt Birney has backed state police commissioner Karl O’Callaghan’s call for mandatory jail sentences for people who assault police.

O’Callaghan advocated the measure after two police officers were bashed during a riot by about 250 people after a funeral in Meekatharra on March 5. “If the police minister was serious about protecting police officers he would immediately ... commit to implementing a new category of assaulting a public officer to be known as serious assault that would attract a minimum mandatory one-year jail term”, Birney told ABC Great Southern WA radio on March 8.

Assaulting police is a charge frequently used against political demonstrators who are arrested.

Dale Mills

From Green Left Weekly, March 15, 2006.
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