Kimberley Mannion
POLICE unions in Spain’s Campo de Gibraltar area are calling for more incentives to attract officers to work in the notoriously crime-ridden zone.
The latest stats reveal that 40% of police officers currently posted within La Linea de la Concepcion and Algeciras have requested transfers to other areas of Spain.
Police in the area have to deal with a multitude of serious crimes including drug trafficking across the Strait of Gibraltar and illegal immigration.
The job can be dangerous, with drug mafias harassing and threatening both officers and their families.
Many officers choose to live far away from the towns they work in due to the threat of violence from those involved in organised crime.
Officers often do not stay in posts in Campo de Gibraltar for long, and so teams are not able to be as thoroughly rooted and developed as they need to be to deal with the type of problems the area faces, explained Antonio Flores, provincial delegate of police union SUP.
The union wants the area to be declared a Special Singularity Zone as was the case in the Spanish regions of Navarra and the Basque Country when policing involved the threat of ETA terrorists.
Flores told El Mundo that the number of officers working within the Campo de Gibraltar zone has not been updated in years in line with the issues facing the areas today.
Some 72 job positions currently remain vacant while some 300 officers have requested transfers, he said.
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