Scottish police officers were found to have carried out 11 assaults and four crimes of indecency last year.
New figures on public complaints show that the allegations were upheld out of thousands of others that were not substantiated or dismissed.
Only one of the 11 assaults were dealt with by a criminal disposal, meaning the matter was dealt with by prosecutors and the courts.
The other 10 resulted in internal disciplinary actions, according to officials statistics lodged with the new national force's watchdog, the Scottish Police Authority (SPA). All allegations were made against on-duty officers.
Another 431 allegations of assault against officers on duty were abandoned, dismissed or not upheld for a variety of different reasons. There were more than 7000 allegations investigated against on-duty police officers in 2014-15. Only 13.7 per cent were upheld.
All four crimes of indecency - a wide category that includes everything from kerbcrawling to rape - lead to criminal proceedings. It is not clear whether the allegations were made about one officer or several. But whoever was responsible was off-duty at the time.
SPA documents show the number of complaints filed against officers soar last year as the new force standardised procedures for dealing with grievances from the public.
New teams have been set up to resolve and investigate complaints, many of which will contain more than one allegation.
The total number of complaints was 5,678, up 1,048, or 22.6% compared with 2013/14. Complaints in the West - the old Strathclyde and Dumfries and Galloway forces - rose even faster, by 43 per cent. They were up 25 per cent in the east but down in the north.
A spokeswoman said: Police Scotland expects all officers and staff to carry out their duties to the highest possible professional standards.
As such, any incident which results in a complaint is treated seriously, with the appropriate investigation carried out.
A spokeswoman said:
"Complaints against the police are kept under review and are regularly monitored to ensure we identify quickly any emerging patterns or issues, and where possible lessons are learned.
"The current figures are an accurate reflection of complaints across the country."
Why are you making commenting on The Herald only available to subscribers?
It should have been a safe space for informed debate, somewhere for readers to discuss issues around the biggest stories of the day, but all too often the below the line comments on most websites have become bogged down by off-topic discussions and abuse.Â
heraldscotland.com is tackling this problem by allowing only subscribers to comment.
We are doing this to improve the experience for our loyal readers and we believe it will reduce the ability of trolls and troublemakers, who occasionally find their way onto our site, to abuse our journalists and readers. We also hope it will help the comments section fulfil its promise as a part of Scotland's conversation with itself.
We are lucky at The Herald. We are read by an informed, educated readership who can add their knowledge and insights to our stories.Â
That is invaluable.Â
We are making the subscriber-only change to support our valued readers, who tell us they don't want the site cluttered up with irrelevant comments, untruths and abuse.
In the past, the journalist’s job was to collect and distribute information to the audience. Technology means that readers can shape a discussion. We look forward to hearing from you on heraldscotland.com
Comments & Moderation
Readers’ comments: You are personally liable for the content of any comments you upload to this website, so please act responsibly. We do not pre-moderate or monitor readers’ comments appearing on our websites, but we do post-moderate in response to complaints we receive or otherwise when a potential problem comes to our attention. You can make a complaint by using the ‘report this post’ link . We may then apply our discretion under the user terms to amend or delete comments.
Post moderation is undertaken full-time 9am-6pm on weekdays, and on a part-time basis outwith those hours.
Read the rules hereComments are closed on this article