Harsher penalties possible for attacks on police - Key

Prime Minister John Key said Police Minister Judith Collins was looking at tougher sentences for offenders who attacked officers. File photo / Janna Dixon

The Government is considering beefing up sentences for offenders who attack police officers after three violent assaults in as many days.

Prime Minister John Key this morning said harsher penalties may not deter drugged out offenders but the change would send a clear message.

In the latest attack last night, an Oamaru police officer was knocked to the ground and repeatedly kicked by a carload of people after the vehicle's driver failed a breath test.

It followed an attack in south Auckland on Friday in which an off-duty officer was beaten unconscious by a group of youths after he tried to break up a fight, and a second attack near Whangarei on Saturday in which an officer's lip was bitten off by a suspected drink driver.

Mr Key said Police Minister Judith Collins was looking at possible changes including tougher penalties.

"If you assault a police officer in the course of their work then you would face a tougher sentence," he told TV One's Breakfast programme.

Mr Key accepted that would not deter someone who was not thinking straight because of drugs or alcohol.

"We need to acknowledge that risk. But on the other side of the coin we hold our police officers in high respect and rightfully so... And I think they are entitled to know that they are treated by society in that way."

He believed that drugs would be behind some of the latest violence.

"I mean when you get barbaric acts like biting off a police officer's lips that's just not normal behaviour, you have to think that something is driving that."

In Western Australia offenders who assaulted a police officer got six months jail. Mr Key said that was an idea that "might work". He said an assault against an officer would count as a strike under a Government policy being made law shortly.

He did not support arming police and said they now had the non-lethal taser option.

"The problem with arming the police is one, those arms can be turned back on them and the second thing is because of the finality of that they are very reluctant to pull those weapons so that split second might make the real difference so I am not a big proponent of arming the police."

Ms Collins has visited two of the injured officers and has started work on possible law changes. She said respect for the law needed to be built up.

In last night's attack, the officer stopped a vehicle on Thames Highway, Oamaru, about 8.10pm in a routine alcohol testing stop. The driver resisted being taken for testing after failing a breath test and the officer tasered him but five passengers brought him to the ground and kicked him repeatedly in what police called a "disgusting and appalling" attack.

He was hospitalised for injuries to his face, elbow and knee.

Police were questioning the six people from the vehicle.

Meanwhile, the off-duty police officer John Connolly beaten unconscious when he tried to break up a fight near his house in Tuakau, south of Auckland, was recovering in Auckland's Middlemore Hospital.

Police said they were continuing the process of interviewing witnesses to the incident on Friday, in which Mr Connolly suffered serious injuries as he and other residents attempted to intervene in a fight.

He was set upon by a group of youths, and the injuries he received included a fractured skull, multiple facial fractures, a collapsed lung, a broken jaw and a broken ankle.

A 15-year-old schoolgirl tried to fend off the teenagers and dragged Mr Connolly to safety.

In the second attack, an officer's lip was chewed off by a suspected drunk driver, sending his colleagues scrambling on their knees to find it.

The driver was stopped in Kamo, on the northern outskirts of Whangarei, about 11.15pm on Saturday.

He became aggressive and attacked the constable, who received serious facial injuries after being bitten, Whangarei District Inspector Clifford Paxton said.

"A significant portion of his lip needs to be reconstructed," he told the Herald.

Reo Rangipohewa Uerata, 29, had appeared in Whangarei District Court on six charges relating to the incident, including assault, resisting arrest and disfigurement by grievous bodily harm.

He was also charged with driving while disqualified, refusing to allow police to take a blood specimen, and threatening grievous bodily harm to a second officer.

Uerata is due back in court tomorrow.

- NZPA