Ambulance chiefs spend £675k on body armour for paramedics after surge in violent attacks on crews
It is part of a £3.3million package to protect London Ambulance Service crews.
They have seen an 11.9 increase in acts of violence or aggression, from 2,087 incidents in 2023 to 2,337 last year — an average of seven a day.
That includes 11 attacks with 'edged weapons' such as knives.
LAS bosses have signed a three-year contract for anti-knife gear from Cooneen Defence, which specialises in military combat and protection clothing.
The ambulance service's chief executive Jason Killens said: 'Violence towards our crews is utterly appalling and unacceptable.
"The impact can be devastating, especially if staff need time off the road to recover.
'Thankfully stabbings and knife injuries are rare for our frontline crews, but we provide all our staff with body armour so we can keep them safe if they feel threatened.'
Last year medic Dean Hawkins risked his life to restrain a Tube passenger wielding a knife in Harrow, North West London.
In 2022 a paramedic had a knife pushed to his back outside his vehicle at University College Hospital, central London.
Last month two LAS members told how a patient they were treating kicked through their windscreen and threw bricks as they tried to help him in Rotherhithe, South East London.
The LAS is also spending money on body-worn cameras and improved CCTV.
Man in his 20s dies as car ploughs into London pub in horror early hours crash
1
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
Sky News
20 minutes ago
- Sky News
Thomas Partey: Ex-Arsenal player charged with rape to appear in court today
Former Arsenal midfielder Thomas Partey is due to appear in court today, charged with raping two women. The 32-year-old, who was charged four days after leaving the north London club when his contract expired back in June, faces five counts of rape and one count of sexual assault. He is accused of two counts of rape against one woman and three counts against another. The sexual assault allegation relates to a third woman, the Crown Prosecution Service has said. The alleged offences took place between 2021 and 2022. The Metropolitan Police said it first received reports of an allegation of rape in February 2022. Partey's lawyer Jenny Wiltshire has previously said the Ghanaian "denies all the charges against him" - and looks forward to the chance to "finally clear his name". Partey joined Arsenal from Spanish side Atletico Madrid in 2020 and became a regular for manager Mikel Arteta, who last month said he was "100% sure" the club followed the correct protocols. An Arsenal spokesperson previously said: "The player's contract ended on 30 June. Due to ongoing legal proceedings, the club is unable to comment on the case." Partey made 35 appearances for the Gunners last season, scoring four goals.
Sky News
an hour ago
- Sky News
Police warn of mass arrests if Palestine Action protest goes ahead
Police are warning of mass arrests if a protest in support of the banned group Palestine Action goes ahead on Saturday. Hundreds of people are expected to turn out for the demonstration, which is understood to be planned for London. However, the Metropolitan Police said "anyone showing support for the group can expect to be arrested." "We are aware that the organisers of Saturday's planned protest are encouraging hundreds of people to turn out with the intention of placing a strain on the police and the wider criminal justice system," said a spokesperson. The organisers, a pressure group called Defend Our Juries, denied their protest will try to overwhelm the police and justice system. "If we are allowed to protest peacefully and freely, then that is no bother to anyone," said the group in a statement. 1:29 Palestine Action was banned under terrorism laws after two aircraft were damaged at RAF Brize Norton on 20 June. Home Secretary Yvette Cooper said the vandalism of the planes was "disgraceful" and accused the group of a "long history of unacceptable criminal damage". The ban means membership of, or support for, Palestine Action is a criminal offence punishable by up to 14 years in prison. More than 200 people supporting the group were arrested at Defend Our Juries protests across the UK last month, many of whom held placards with the message: "I oppose genocide, I support Palestine Action." Downing Street has urged people not to attend this weekend's protest. It comes after around 40 people gathered outside Labour HQ on Monday to protest the party's stance on Gaza. They were watched by a small group of police officers as they chanted phrases including: "Shame on Keir Starmer, shame on the Labour Party, shame on David Lammy." Separately, the Board of Deputies of British Jews has also confirmed it will protest this weekend, with community organisations marching through central London to Downing Street on Sunday. They are calling for the government not to recognise the state of Palestine without all hostages taken by Hamas being released. Last week, Sir Keir Starmer said he planned to recognise Palestine by the UN General Assembly meeting in September, unless Israel met certain conditions including agreeing a ceasefire and improving the humanitarian situation in Gaza.
Daily Mail
an hour ago
- Daily Mail
Eight years on, the undiagnosed condition that may explain why no one believed Chloe Ayling after she was snatched by a madman, injected with ketamine and held captive
She became one of the most famous – or infamous – kidnapping victims of our time. When British glamour model Chloe Ayling was abducted on a bogus photoshoot in Milan in 2017, her plight made global headlines and last year led to a gripping TV drama. Little wonder, because it was the real-life stuff of nightmares. Chloe, then only 20, was grabbed from behind and bundled into a suitcase. Injected with ketamine and chained to furniture, she was forced to sleep on the floor of a remote farmhouse. Pictures of her lying unconscious in skimpy clothing were sent to her manager in London, along with a demand for €300,000 (£260,000). If the ransom wasn't paid within a week, she would be auctioned off as a sex slave. She was also told she risked being fed to tigers when her 'buyers' tired of her. Although she was eventually released, it has been another ordeal for Chloe to rebuild her life. The reason? Many simply didn't believe her graphic and appalling story. So outlandish was the sequence of events she described – and crucially how odd her unemotional retelling of the story was – that to this day, eight years on, questions still abound about whether she was complicit in the kidnap and it was all an elaborate publicity stunt. Could the BBC documentary airing tonight finally silence the online commentators and conspiracy theorists? Including interviews with British and Italian police officers who were involved (and some of whom admit they too doubted Chloe's story at first), the three-part series offers an interesting new theory. It suggests Chloe's lack of emotion, both during the kidnap and in media interviews afterwards, was the result of immaturity and nervousness at finding herself in the public eye – but also of undiagnosed autism. Towards the end of the documentary, she actually receives a formal diagnosis of autism spectrum disorder, which she says explains so much – not just about her reactions during her kidnap ordeal, but about her life before and since. 'I had a lot of difficulties with communication,' she explains in the documentary, while poring over childhood pictures. 'I'd react in the wrong way. If I was being told off I would smile. I just had the wrong reactions to things. 'My mum would come with me on school trips because I wouldn't be able to say what I wanted or express how I was feeling. For ages I just said I'm not an emotional person, but now I realise that no matter now hard I try, I just can't [express emotion].' In hindsight this was never more apparent than Chloe's attempt to communicate what had happened to her when she returned home to the UK. What a catastrophe that was. She admits: 'The aftermath affected me more than the kidnap.' The defining moment for many was when Chloe emerged from her mother's house to face the world's press to deliver a statement that began: 'I feared for my life, second by second, minute by minute, hour by hour.' The mountain house where Chloe was held for six days near Turin in Italy The smile on her face, her almost cheerily robotic delivery, and the way she was dressed – in a revealing vest top and tiny pair of shorts – seemed completely at odds with the seriousness of the situation. Public bafflement was quickly followed by judgment. These days we might call it victim blaming, although there looked to be inconsistencies in Chloe's story which contributed to the sheer disbelief that the situation happened the way she said it did. Why had she gone shopping with her kidnapper to buy shoes, for instance? Why hadn't she tried to run? Chloe, now 28, has spent the years since trying to convince others about what happened – even though in the eyes of the law there is no doubt whatsoever. Polish national Lukasz Herba was sentenced to 16 years and nine months (although this was later reduced to just over 11 years on appeal) after being convicted of her kidnapping. A career that went on to include a stint in the Big Brother house the following year – seen by many as evidence of Chloe's desire to be famous at all costs – hardly helped. 'What is it about me and my story that makes this so unbelievable?' she asks at the start of this documentary. By the end, you get the impression she has as much of an answer as she is ever going to get: because she didn't behave in the way most victims would, her story was scrutinised and found lacking. And because no one asked whether her robotic telling of her story could have another explanation, she was dismissed as a money-grabber who wanted only to be famous. By rights she should be livid, although she doesn't appear to be. 'I can't really be mad at people for not understanding, when I didn't really understand it myself,' she concludes. Chloe's diagnosis is a development that makes complete sense to her former manager Phil Green, who appears in the documentary reliving the horror of having to deal with hostage demands. Phil, who had been a lawyer before setting up a modelling agency, met Chloe when she was 19 and told me this week while the attractive teenager was clearly ambitious ('her goal was to have 100,000 followers on Instagram'), she wasn't a typical model-about-town. 'She didn't seem to have many friends, and didn't hang about with the other models. She lived at home with her mum,' he says. Unusually, for someone starting off in modelling, she also had a baby son 'who would only have been about one at the time,' remembers Phil. The child lived with his father, Chloe's ex partner Conor Keyes. Phil had not been aware of any suggestion of autism until the documentary, but now wonders if Chloe's condition actually helped her maintain a facade of calmness during the ordeal. 'Her reaction to everything that happened was so unemotional, even at the time, but maybe that was a good thing because if she'd behaved in the way some other girls would have who knows what would have happened? Chloe smiles in a skimpy top and shorts as she spoke to the press outside her mother's house after leaving Italy 'Afterwards though it led to people just not believing her.' His inclusion in the documentary defending her is also interesting given the background. Although Phil was the one who always seemed most steadfastly in her corner, Chloe appears to have blamed him for not doing enough to help secure her freedom and perhaps for putting her in jeopardy in the first place by sending her to Milan for the assignment. She dumped him as her manager as soon as she returned from Italy and they haven't spoken since. 'It was brutal,' he says of his sacking. 'I think she blamed me for what happened and we've never been able to sit down and talk properly about it. 'She thought I'd abandoned her [to the kidnappers], but the reality is that my office, which was in my house, had been taken over by the police. 'They were replying to the kidnapper's emails on my behalf. I was out of my depth trying to deal with it all, and I still feel terrible about what happened. I think she has remained bitter. But I always knew she was telling the truth.' He feels Chloe was the victim of more than the kidnapping, angrily lashing out today at the Italian prosecutors who put her story in the public domain against Chloe's own wishes. They also forced her to stay in Italy for weeks after her release, effectively holding her captive all over again. 'If that had happened to an Italian girl in Britain, she would have been allowed to go home immediately to be with her family.' On top of that, the Italian authorities took Chloe back to the property where she had been held – ostensibly to help with their investigation. 'My feeling then was that they didn't believe her and wanted to see her reaction,' he says. The feeling that Chloe was badly let down is echoed by the detective superintendent who headed the British side of the operation, who admits on camera (on condition of anonymity) that the lowest point in his 30-year career was when he realised he had not been able to find or save Chloe. 'It was my job to get her back and I didn't,' he says. The astonishing thing about this case is that it was not the authorities in either Britain or Italy who did save her. She was found only because the man holding her – a man she knew as 'MD', but who was later identified as Polish national Lukasz Herba – walked her into the British Consulate in Milan. In court Herba was described as a 'narcissistic fantasist' who had become obsessed with Chloe. A computer programmer who was living in the West Midlands, Herba had been a Facebook friend of Chloe's (a fact she discovered only after the kidnapping). In order to kidnap her he concocted an elaborate plan, posing as a photographer called Andre Lazio to book her via her agent for a modelling job in Milan. With the help of his brother Michal, who was also jailed for his part, he then abducted Chloe when she arrived in Italy, drugging her and bundling her into a holdall, before taking her to a remote hideout where he kept her captive for six days. He convinced Chloe that he was a trained assassin working for a Mafia organisation called Black Death. Although he never sexually assaulted her, she does speak in this documentary about how he did make sexual advances – but backed off when she convinced him that they would be able to embark on a proper relationship once she was free. She refers to an incident where he tried to kiss her but she declined, saying that she wasn't in the right 'headspace' but implied she could be once she was free. 'He lit up then and everything changed,' she says. 'He could easily have just raped me,' says Chloe, 'but he had this idea of having me in his future. He didn't want to upset me. I repeated that I was not in the right headspace. I wanted to be released before anything sexual happens. I got up and went to have a shower and he was all sorted after my shower. We didn't speak about it again.' Sharing his bed and shopping with him? While these were all details that caused people to doubt her, she says it was all part of her desperate attempt to gain his trust, hoping that he would break ranks, defy his dangerous bosses and help her escape. She was not to know that there was no Black Death organisation. 'He was the good guy in my eyes,' she says. After Herba deposited her at the British Consulate, initially Chloe attempted to stick to the script Herba had drilled into her – that he had simply found her and was her rescuer – but she soon caved under questioning. The fact that some details, such as the shopping trip for shoes, emerged later was highly damning to Chloe, but the Italian police accepted her story that she was simply embarrassed at how far she had gone to appear to be her captor's girlfriend. But public opinion was never as accepting and Chloe is understandably hurt that she was never given credit for her own role in her escape. What has happened to her since? After that perhaps ill-advised appearance on Celebrity Big Brother in 2018, she has rebuilt her life as a model, posting regularly on OnlyFans and Instagram (where she describes herself as an 'entrepreneur' and a 'multiple property owner'). She was never in a career that was compatible with anonymity, but she reveals in the documentary that a few years ago she bought a property in North Wales, falling in love with the area and attracted by the fact that no one knows who she is there. There is no mention of her son in the documentary. She declined to involve him for privacy reasons. Nor is her mum Beata a part of it. Chloe, originally from Coulsdon in south London, explains that her mother was so traumatised by the kidnap ordeal that she still cannot talk about it even eight years on. And while the autism diagnosis has helped Chloe herself understand the backlash against her, she is keen to stress that it does not excuse how she was doubted. There is rarely such a thing as a 'perfect victim' she says. 'Autism plays a big part in the way that I reacted, and that was confusing to neurotypical people. 'However, there are other reasons why people could react in the way that I did, or in an 'unusual' way that doesn't fit the normal box. 'People disassociate with events that have happened or have a delayed reaction, especially after trauma. So, it can't all be put down to a diagnosis, and that shouldn't affect the way people treated me.'
