In the line of duty?

摘要

IN some areas such as the ambulance service or retail, the problem of violent attacks on staff has been well documented as it has grown in recent years, though adequate explanations for the phenomenon have lagged behind the publicity that organisations such as the British Retail Consortium, the NHS or the trade unions have generated for it. As we report on page 6, the number of attacks on employees in all industries in the course of their work rose by 117,000 (around 50%) in the past year, though the figures are still far lower than in the mid-1990s.