”I think it’s a very good idea. It’s nice to know that you can talk to a British police officer, someone who speaks your own language in the case of an incident.
“Sometimes the local police can be a bit hard and there are always language problems which only complicate matters,” a British holidaymaker said yesterday as the two members from the West Midlands police took to the beat in Magalluf for the first time.
The resort has struggled over recent years to deal with an increase in drunken and violent behaviour recently.
According to the Foreign Office, 500 Britons were arrested there in 2011 and 2012, mainly for drink-related offences.
The two British officers will spend this week patrolling alongside members of the Guardia Civil in the resort and also other hotspots including beaches, airport terminals and town centres.
They are wearing full British uniform and work eight-hour shifts between 7am and 10pm. The National Police Chiefs’ Council said it would assist the Guardia Civil when British nationals were victims of crime, support any criminal investigations where Britons were victims, witnesses or offenders, and help British nationals who were victims of domestic violence, sexual abuse or other serious offences.