Three officers were attacked at the weekend in separate incidents.
The situation was going to be reassessed, and that included looking at whether it should be mandatory for attacks on officers to be an aggravating factor in sentencing, Mr Key said yesterday.
Current law gives judges discretion over whether that should be the case.
"When we see the sort of acts we saw on the weekend I think most New Zealanders were offended," Mr Key said at his post-cabinet press conference.
"They were barbaric acts and quite frankly they were disgusting, and if anyone thinks the Government is going to sit back while police officers' lips are being bitten off and do nothing about it, then they need to think again."
Government officials will use a report from police about increasing acts of violence when they work out ways to curb the problem.
Mr Key said statistics showed there were 412 assaults on police in the 2008/09 year compared with 216 in 1999/2000.
Off-duty policeman John Connolly was left seriously injured after trying to break up a fight south of Auckland and being attacked by a group of youths on Friday.
In another incident near Whangarei a police officer had part of his lip bitten off when he tried to breath test a suspected drink driver, and in a third an Oamaru policeman was knocked to the ground and kicked by a carload of people after the vehicle's driver failed a breath test.
Police Commissioner Howard Broad said yesterday mid-level assaults on officers could be brought within the proposed three strikes sentencing legislation.
Under the legislation, to be included in the Sentencing and Parole Reform Bill, anyone committing a third serious violent offence would serve the maximum sentence with no parole.
"I think that ministers need an option to consider whether or not a mid-level assault on a police officer would be of a sufficiently serious nature that would bring it within the three strikes policy," he told Radio New Zealand.
He also said that police may need more guns available from locked boxes in patrol cars.
