Attacks on police officers have risen by more than a quarter in the Scottish Highlands in recent years while major cities have seen a decline, figures show.
Chief Superintendent Robert Shepherd, who oversees the Highlands and Islands, said violence against officers continues to be at an "unacceptable" level.
Highland has the highest rate of incidents per head within Police Scotland.
New figures obtained by The Herald, through freedom of information legislation. show that 381 incidents were logged in 2023 for N division, which includes the Highlands, Western Isles, Orkney and Shetland and is an area served by around 1048 officers.
In 2021, 297 incidents were recorded, a rise since then of more than 28%. There were 311 attacks in 2022.
The data shows that attacks on police officers have fallen in Scotland's two biggest cities each year since 2021.
A total of 1651 incidents were recorded in Greater Glasgow in 2021 with 1549 logged in 2023. In Scotland's capital city there were 516 reported attacks on police officers, a fall from 595 two years earlier.
The increased risk officers face in the Highlands led to Chief Superintendent Shepherd arguing that the region should be the pilot division for body-worn cameras.
However, Police Scotland has now said a country-wide roll-out will get under way in the Summer and no area will be prioritised.
The chief superintendent said there were "north specific" reasons for the region's higher rate of assaults.
"Unlike in Glasgow where you have five other units within two minutes of you, up here they can often be hours away so if you are a police officer in Skye, your colleagues in Fort William could be an hour-and-a-half away," he said.
"That has two effects.
"The first effect is that if you arrest someone and there are two of you on duty then there is no one policing Skye any more and so that leads to potentially a reticence to arrest people.
"In Glasgow, if someone does something - and it's completely right that they get arrested and taken to custody - there are still five other units in that area policing.
"If you are dealing with someone that is very challenging, you are trying not to arrest them, that increases the chance that you are going to be assaulted.
"If my officers are worried about arresting someone because of the effect it might have on policing an area, a situation is likely to go on for longer and there's that spiralling effect."
He said "in a world of riches" more officers would be desirable and said a review is under way looking at the policing model in the Highlands.
"The number of officers we have copes with our day-to-day business as usual and it's designed to do that," said the police chief.
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"Every once in a while things happen that challenge that but no police force can resource for those rare events."
He said the rise in attacks might also be due to officers having more confidence to report more, minor incidents.
He said: "We are clear that it is never in your job description to be assaulted and that has been reinforced and reinforced and reinforced and so one of the contributing factors to that increase in N division is that people are reporting things are more minor than they would have done before.
"So the great majority are at the bottom end of seriousness - attempted assaults, verbal abuse and then we get on to the middle layer of punches, kicks, bruises and spitting.
"Then very rarely do we see incidents where people are injured or hospitalised.
"Even though we have seen an increase, I think [that] every single day officers [now] understand that they should report it."
He said work he led on assaults while at the Metropolitan Police showed the most common place for officers to be assaulted is in the police custody suite and that from this year all new probationers would now get additional training in conflict resolution.
Police Scotland is the second largest force in the UK after the Met but it is the only one not to have the cameras as standard equipment.
The technology has been in use in England since 2016.
"It will be a game changer for a whole range of reasons," said the chief superintendent.
"Not just from the point of police assaults but catching best evidence, disproving complaints or providing good evidence for public complaints.
"All round it's very welcome and can't come soon enough.
"Any change like this will be challenging and Highlands and Islands provides its own challenges.
"It's not just about the camera that the officer wears. There's the docking station and the IT infrastructure that sits behind it.
"All that needs to happen, which is a massive IT project, which is further complicated by our geography.".
Police officers across Scotland suffered 18 assaults a day in 2022/23 which, while a slight reduction on the previous year, still accounted for a total of 6,657 cases.
In more than a quarter of these episodes, officers sustained notable injuries.
In January Scott McGregor was jailed for 12 years after pleading guilty to the attempted murder of one police officer and assaulting two others during a frenzied attack that took place in a flat in Glasgow’s Lambhill in October 2022.
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