Western Australia's Police Union says people who assault police officers should not be eligible for suspended sentences.
A new study estimates 38 per cent of serving WA police officers suffer from PTSD.
The state government said a mandatory term of imprisonment was appropriate for serious assaults on officers.
Western Australia's Police Union says assaults against officers are becoming violent in the state's north and is calling for harsher penalties to be enforced.
Kimberley police say three officers in Broome, 2,200 kilometres north of Perth, were spat on while performing their duties on a single day last week.
Police statistics show 87 recorded assaults on police officers across the region to June 2026, up from 84 in the same period last year.
However, a new report by a former WA police sergeant has found rates of post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) are rising within the force.
WA Police Union spokesperson Simone Taplin said there had been an uptick in needle-stick injuries, as well as officers being spat at.
"Our officers have to go and have blood tests and follow-ups in a month to ensure they've not caught any diseases."
Under WA law, anyone charged with one of these attacks must be tested for contractible diseases.
But Ms Taplin said courts were not enforcing the tougher penalties available.
"There is a mandatory term of imprisonment for any assault on police that has an assault occasioning bodily harm element to it," Ms Taplin said.
"Instead, we're seeing offenders being given convictions that are suspended and therefore not doing time in jail."
Ms Taplin said offenders "deserved punishment" and the justice system needed to be "held to account" and get behind police.
Former WA police sergeant and researcher Dan Talbot released a report yesterday tracking the impact of PTSD in the force.
The Blue Poppy Study, a collaboration between ECU, Murdoch University and UWA, surveyed 1,278 serving police officers, representing almost 20 per cent of the workforce.
It found more than 38 per cent of respondents had PTSD, "alarmingly" higher than previous recordings of around 20 per cent, Dr Talbot said.
He said across five years of research, he saw a lot of "very damaged police officers".
The findings indicated officers were getting their main source of support from partners or loved ones, followed by colleagues.
Support from the department was the lowest form, according to respondents at the time of the research.
"I look at my own experience, the trauma you faced wasn't as frequent, maybe not even as intense," Dr Talbot said.
"You had time to recover and re-centre a little bit between these things, whereas now they just seem to keep going, the load and the frequency of events."
Mr Talbot said he hoped this information would inform strategies about how the force responds to officers with PTSD.
The ABC sent questions to Police Minister Reece Whitby and Attorney-General Toni Buti, asking for their stance on the potential removal of suspended sentences in police assault cases.
In response, a state government spokesperson said they had invested in supporting and equipping WA police with body-worn cameras and training.
"Police officers should always be shown the respect they deserve by the community and any violence is absolutely unacceptable," they said.
"More police are responding and arriving at incidents quicker, sometimes in the heat of the moment, which can lead to assaults."
The spokesperson said the mandatory six-month jail term for anyone guilty of assault occasioning bodily harm against a police officer was an appropriate penalty.