A Northland police officer has had to have stitches to his head after being attacked by two men.
The sole-charge officer had been called out to check reports of fighting and drunken disorder at Matauri Bay north of Kerikeri in the early hours of Sunday morning.
As he was arresting a 19-year-old man, police say, two other men attacked him with his baton and punched him repeatedly in the head and body.
The officer is now recovering at home.
Two men, aged 17 and 19, have been charged with assault.
The attack came hours before another officer escaped a knife and machete attack and two weeks after a vicious machete attack that left a constable in Taihape badly injured.
