Prosecutors have seen an increase in the number of people charged with assaulting police since Suffolk District Attorney Rachael Rollins included resisting arrest among the 15 “non-violent” offenses that her office now looks to dismiss unless a supervisor’s permission is obtained.

“One of the 15 is resisting arrest, so we’ve seen an uptick in assault and battery on a police officer,” Donna Patalano, general counsel for the DA’s office, said Wednesday at a Boston College Law School panel discussion on the charging decisions. “We need to figure out why.”

Rollins’ guidelines for prosecutors call for the dismissal of stand-alone resisting arrest, as well as resisting arrest combined with one or more of the 14 other dismissible offenses, which include receiving stolen property, drug possession with intent to distribute, and wanton or malicious destruction of property.

Patalano was referring to a sudden “anecdotal” uptick last week, Rollins’ spokesman Jake Wark later told the Herald. Wark said the supervisory prosecutors in the various courthouses told the DA at the end of the week that they’d seen a bump as compared to previous weeks in the number of people charged with assault and battery on a police officer.

Both resisting arrest and assault and battery on a police officer are misdemeanors, but a conviction on the later charge carries a mandatory 90 days behind bars, while there is no minimum sentence for resisting.

Wark said the DA’s office plans on looking at the data further to see if the supposed bump exists and continues. When asked if the DA’s office believes cops are doing this to get around the no-prosecute list, Wark said, “that is two or three leaps” further than the office is claiming right now.

Boston police spokesman Sgt. John Boyle said no data on charges filed was immediately available and, “I’m not going to comment on something unless I have the stats to back it up.”

Wark said the DA’s prosecutors aren’t treating the assault and battery charges like they’re on the no-prosecute list.

Rollins, who was a member of the panel, said her office is collecting data to detect trends and training prosecutors on the guidelines, which allow them to dismiss low-level crimes under certain conditions — such as if the offense was committed as a result of poverty, mental illness and/or addiction — because those offenses are “clogging up the system.”

They also cost taxpayers $55,000 per year every time a defendant is sent to jail, “when we should be diverting those resources to … unsolved homicides,” she said.

“I would not have done this if I thought” the number of crimes would go up, Rollins added.

And what she is doing is not entirely new. Under her predecessor, Daniel F. Conley, about 60 percent of misdemeanors overall also were dismissed, she said.

Former Boston police Commissioner William B. Evans, another panel member, said when he first heard of Rollins’ plans, “I thought, holy, you’re going to throw out all these crimes?”

But he got on board when she assured him that “we are going to lock up if it’s a serious case,” Evans said.

Otherwise, he said, “we’re all about lifting kids up, not locking them up.”