Police must work without interpreters

[Canarian Weekly]

SINCE the beginning of this year, Police stations at the main tourist resorts here in Tenerife, such as Playa de Las Americas and Puerto de la Cruz, have been without interpreters to translate the complaints and statements of witnesses or defendants, said theTenerifeprovincial executive committee of the Spanish Confederation of Police (CEP). The reason for this situation lies in the Interior Ministry’s decision to eliminate the interpreter service just before the summer and “trust in police language training,” said the CEP.

A circular from the Home Office, sent last May said, “Interpreters can no longer be used and therefore each station must cope by using their own officers with language skills”.

The Ministry explained further, “Due to current budgetary constraints and in order to rationalise spending, police stations are instructed, until they receive further notice, to refrain from using the services of interpreters that have, until now, been commonly used for assistance to detainees, offices and Citizen Complaints.”

The National Police station in Playa de Las Americas had two interpreters, who worked in English, French and German, while in Puerto de la Cruz they had a translator for English and German. Currently, there are no interpreters at these two stations.

The measure to remove the interpreters has not only affected the police, but, as far as tourism is concerned, airports have also had the service removed.

At Tenerife Sur airport, the National Police lost their translator back in March of this year. Currently, the only National Police station which has an interpreter is in the capital,Santa Cruz de Tenerife.

It appears that it has only just been made public, in addition you can no longer telephone and make a denuncia in your own language you have to go to the police station; it seems at one of the busiest times of the year essential services have once again been withdrawn.

More... (http://www.canarianweekly.com/police-work-interpreters/)

[Dan747]

Perhaps an easy way for the Spanish Police to overcome the language barrier with all the Brits would be to do what Oz, New Zealand and a few other countries do and try to recruit some British cops, providing they can speak or can learn to speak Spanish.

British cops remain some of the best in the World and I'm sure the Spanish police would improve greatly with a few of them in the ranks, especially at the likes of Americas and other major resorts on the mainland.

Some UK forces have started recruiting other European nationals so they can better deal with any fellow countrymen in the UK, I know of a Polish guy who is a Lancashire cop working with the Polish communities in the likes of Blackpool. Seems a pretty sensible idea really.

[sunseeker]

why not employ 2nd generation expats as police. the kids that were born here to expat parents that are working age now are bilingual. like me. :)

[slodgedad]

why not employ 2nd generation expats as police. the kids that were born here to expat parents that are working age now are bilingual. like me. :)

Great idea. My daughter has lived here since she was 3 and is now 21.

She was always interested in police work whilst in school but was told, when she enquired that either she had to be a Spanish national or at least one of her parents had to be.

She even considered taking Spanish nationality when she left school but changed her mind when she was told she would lose her UK nationality.

[bonitatime]

I hadn't realized you needed to be Spanish for the police force but I know the exams for joining are regarded as hard.

[Dan747]

Yea bit of a strange one really with the requirement for Spanish nationality, they are losing out big style with that rule. Especially when you consider the amount of Brits they have to deal with.

The reason I said try to bring some UK cops in rather than expats is simply because they would be recruiting from a talented and already well trained resource who are experienced in dealing with conflict and other policing issues, especially drunken roudy Brits! Which is the main reasons Oz and Canada etc like to recruit British cops. It would seem pretty sensible to allow expats to apply though who meet the grade.

It used to be that to join the British Police you had to be British or from the commonwealth, but with the EU freedom to live and work rule they changed it to allow any European national to apply. As per it seems Britain jumped straight away to let anybody from other EU countries join, but countries such as Spain refused and kept it to being open to only their own.

I don't think it's very fair really that a Spanish person can move to Britain and join the Police, but it doesn't work the other way around.