There's a silly petition going round calling for life sentences for anyone who kills a police officer, firefighter etc. This is in response to the sentences on the three young men who killed PC Harper. Here is why this is a silly and pointless petition:

The petition doesn't appear to make any distinction between murder and manslaughter.
The law already requires that anyone who commits any murder will if convicted get a life sentence, whoever the victim is. That is the only sentence for murder. The law doesn't need changing.

In all cases of manslaughter a life sentence is already possible depending on the circumstances. The law doesn't need changing. But no offence differs so greatly in possible circumstances than manslaughter.

Some manslaughter cases come very close to murder as did the Harper case itself. At the other end a drunken man take a swing at a PC trying to speak to him. He misses but in seeking to avoid the blow the PC slips and cracks his head on the pavement and dies.

Such different circumstances require flexibility in determining the appropriate sentence. One may cry out for a life sentence, the other only a short sentence. Demanding that all cases where death is involved require a life sentence makes no sense.

But since the petition doesn't makes this clear, it may be that the proponents mean that the sentence of life should be a whole life sentence if a police officer is killed. Again, that would be an absurd suggestion to make.

There would then be no distinction between a case like that of Hashem Abedi who murdered 22 people in the Manchester Arena bombing and who only escaped that sentence due to his age and our drunken idiot whose unlawful attempted blow resulted in a death.

The law already allows a judge to pass a life sentence in any case involving a killing whether public servant or not. There is no need and therefore no point in this petition. It is the product of misunderstanding of the current law. It might also lead to serious injustice.