The patchiness of historical records makes it impossible to state with any validity whether violence against the police has gone up and, if so, by how much and when. Despite this absence of hard evidence, the view is widely held that assaults are on the increase. The motivating factor for the research presented here was the high rate of documented assaults upon police officers in South Wales. There were 619 individuals involved in assaults on police officers in South Wales in 1988, and 37 of these were involved more than once. This represented an 18-percent increase over the 1986 number. The research included the assailant's viewpoint, which has not been investigated carefully before and which allowed profiles for both assailants and officers to be built. The article summarizes the findings regarding the characteristics of the assailants and the characteristics of the assaulted officers. It concludes with a summary of some of the recommendations which the South Wales police force might adopt to reduce the rate of assaults upon its officers. 1 table and 7 references