Crime tsar’s £15,000 donation to help treat injured police officers

Julia Mulligan has pledged to hand over the money over three years to The Police Treatment Centres, which cares for more than 4,000 officers every year.

It has two bases, St Andrew’s in Harrogate and Castlebrae in Perthshire, Scotland, where injured and ill police officers get
intensive physiotherapy treatment to help them return to full fitness.

Charity officials say a police officer is assaulted every 20 minutes across the country, while five out of six have been assaulted on duty since 2002.

There were 18,744 assaults between April 2009 and March 2010 alone.

The charity’s £4m annual running costs are largely funded by small weekly contributions from police officers themselves.

However it has been forced to find new sources of income due to falling numbers of officers in service.

Chief executive Michael Baxter said more than 170 North Yorkshire Police officers were treated by the charity in 2012 alone.

Mrs Mulligan said: “I am delighted to be able to support this brilliant charity.

“Michael and his team do an awful lot to help and support suffering police officers, and they offer fantastic facilities in Harrogate.

“This money shows that I am putting victims at the heart of everything I do, and police officers can easily be overlooked as victims.

“They work in a very difficult environment, and I am delighted to be able to support this worthy cause.”