Police to use 'spit hoods' to prevent officers being attacked

Humberside Police is set to trial the use of 'spit hoods'

The mesh hoods are already used by a third of the UK's police forces, including West and North Yorkshire Police.

Initially they will be used by a team of officers in Hull as a pilot starting on Monday.

Humberside Police Federation, which represents rank and file officers, welcomed the move, saying they would be "really useful."

Critics have said they are distressing and humiliating and could cause panic in a detained person.

There have also been claims they have been used unnecessarily, including on children and disabled people.

But Pete Musgrave, the federation's chair said the equipment did not inhibit seeing, hearing or breathing.

"We don't come to work to be assaulted. (Spitting) is not the most common form of assault, normally we are talking more physical assault using fists, but when it does happen, it really affects officers.

"We understand the viewpoint (of critics) but actually it is very modern. It doesn't inhibit anything sensory-wise and it doesn't appear to me to be cruel or barbaric."

PC Tracy St Paul, from Humberside Police, faces six months of blood tests for hepatitis A, B and HIV, after being spat at in the back of an ambulance as she was accompanying a wanted man, who had been found unconscious in the street with a head injury, to Scunthorpe Hospital.

The wait has caused her huge worry, but thankfully the first set of results have come back clear.

She said: "All of a sudden he was lying on the bed and he just turned over in our direction and spat at us both. It caught me in the face and some of it went into my eye and I think it caught the ambulance technician on her face.

"Six months is a long time to be thinking about that and worrying about that.

"It's in the back of your mind all the time. But you don't want to think about it, because actually what can you do? There's no cure for these diseases."

West Yorkshire Police has used spit hoods since 2013. In 2015 they were used 58 times, mostly on men.

The youngest was 16. The force said use of a spit hood had to be "proportionate, appropriate and justifiable in response to the behaviour exhibited, or threat made, by the detainee."