A municipal police officer from Santa Fe, Granada, was reduced to having to shout for help when dealing with thieves because they don’t have any radios.

But that’s not all that they are lacking because the police union, Sipan, complains that they don’t have torches, there’s no tow-truck to remove badly parked vehicles and all their squad-car radios are broken.

It was 01.30h one morning and the police had received a call to say that a robbery had taken place at an open-air parking area in town, so a patrol car with three policemen set off to investigate. When they arrived they decided to split up and comb the area individually… but they had no torches or personal radios.

One of them came face-to-face with three suspicious and ‘unfriendly’ individuals busily stealing diesel from one of the parked lorries. When they noticed the lone policeman, they began throwing things at him so he retreated to a safe distance behind a parked car. With no radio, whistle… or luck, he began shouting his head off to attract the attention of his colleagues.

Fortunately, they came running and the thieves left, running, so all ended well.

The policemen, who have been asking for personal radios for well over a year, normally manage by using their personal mobile phones, but as the police union points out, when you’re in a tight spot you don’t have time to whip out the telephone, unblock it, find a number and dial.

The Town Hall, in the meantime, has said that it will meet with the union and see what material can be found. As for the police not being able to tow anybody’s vehicle away, we don’t expect that there will be many tears shed in Santa Fe over this issue.

(News: Santa Fe, Granada, Andalucia)