I'm going to be a little wonky. I hope you'll forgive me.
When you ask if the violence is increasing, in the paramedic community we don't know because we don't have the data. We have lots of anecdotal evidence and there are lots of news reports around it.
Is violence increasing? Maybe. Are our systems increasingly stretched and are we trying to do more and more with less and less? Absolutely. Are paramedics willing to talk about it more? One of my colleagues, Mandy Johnston, stood up and said “It's not okay. Violence is not okay”, and developed this entire program of research and this entire intervention strategy that has been able to bring these data to you.
Is violence increasing? We don't know right now. What we know is that it's unacceptably high.