Police Scotland sickness absences from attacks on officers rise by more than a third

David Threadgold, the chairman of the Scottish Police Federation, which represents rank-and-file officers, said: “Police officers should not have to go to work to be assaulted. The minimum that you would expect is for employees to be trained to deal with it.

“There’s no doubt that when body-worn cameras are finally rolled out, we will see a reduction in assaults and officer absences.”

Rob Hay, the president of the Association of Scottish Police Superintendents, told an SPA meeting: “When you look at the number of assaults that have gone up, and the fact that the likelihood of injury associated with that is more severe, you could directly attribute that to the fact that we chose to pause that training for a month.”

Police Scotland awarded a £13.3 million contract to Motorola Solutions to deliver 10,500 body-worn cameras over the next three years, following a promise by Humza Yousaf, the former first minister, to introduce them.

But 1919 reported there had been a delay thanks to problems with the process of bridging the body-worn video camera technology with existing digital capabilities.