The Good Cops Of The Resorts

German tourists in Playa de Palma have started to take things into their hands. They have been making posters which can be stuck into the sand which declare "no sunglasses", "no massage". There are also t-shirts bearing the same messages. The targets of these messages should be obvious. Other German tourists have been behaving in a somewhat less responsible fashion. On more than one occasion, great hordes of them have taken to the main road, chanting and blocking traffic.

There is a common thread to these two separate examples of how tourists behave. The local police. Here is a resort which is subject to a city ordinance that was designed to bring an end to (or at least reduce) anti-social behaviour and illegal trades. Yet, there are tourists who are so fed up with the pestering they receive from the lookies and the massage girls that they have sought to deter them, while there are others who appear to be able to brazenly take to the streets (a main road no less) and conduct themselves in a wholly inappropriate manner. Where are the police?

Well, one factor is that the reinforcement of local police numbers isn't due to take effect until 1 June. Why? The tourism season, in a sort of official sense, starts on 1 May; in truth, it does of course start earlier. Is a 1 June commencement for the reinforcement a reflection of the laments that the season has become ever shorter? It shouldn't be. The security forces should not be bound by notions of seasonality.

Local police numbers can of course only ever be finite. Resources dictate this. Police numbers are dwarfed by the sheer volume of visitors - both welcome and unwelcome. There is mitigation, therefore. They, the finite numbers which exist, can't be everywhere. Nevertheless, these examples from Playa de Palma highlight a problem - not just one of police numbers but of image.

Last summer, the public prosecutor started the second phase of an investigation into the local police force that had been opened the previous September. Various police officers were being looked into. Allegations included trafficking of influence and bribery. The Guardia Civil had been called in and had raided a police station in 2013.

Earlier this year, a well-known businessman (unnamed) with interests in nightlife in Playa de Palma was arrested. This investigation is now in court. Witnesses have been giving evidence of payments to one officer for "turning a blind eye", who was apparently prone to visiting one particular club owner in seeking ever more payment. These witnesses have also spoken of orgies involving prostitutes which were attended by public officials, including one mayor from the "part forana" of Mallorca, i.e. away from Palma. Police officers did not, according to witnesses, attend these orgies, but there were alleged "arrangements" for alcohol and sex, though never payments.

This investigation and the complaints about an absence of police in the resort are not linked, except in one way: image. They might also be said to be linked through an issue of morale. The good cops are operating against a background of an ongoing investigation into allegedly bad cops. While lookies and massage girls patrol the beaches and German tourists maraud across the main road and can all do so with apparent impunity, a link - however false - might be made. The good cops are damned, and unreasonably so, by association.

There is of course a similarity between events in Playa de Palma and those in Magalluf. Police corruption allegations arose there last summer, and with the new season upon us, the good cops - and the Guardia - appear to still have their hands tied by regulations that do not allow them to tackle the resort's principal problem of the mugging prostitutes, while, for reasons that baffle many, they cannot yet enforce local ordinance designed to tackle anti-social behaviour.

Whether this ordinance, once it is in place, achieves what it is designed to is questioned by many, just as it is in Playa de Palma. And if it fails, then the image of the police (and of politicians) will be dented further. Some bad cops may have brought this negative image upon themselves and, by association, their forces, but the good cops have to be given the means.

There is this vast gap between developments of resort embellishment and improvement and the lights of the more seedy infrastructure which attracts the moths of poor behaviour and criminality. Tourism will always attract these, but they don't have to be a given or to be to the extent that they are, and until such a time as the greater excesses are truly stamped on and stamped out, the investments of embellishment will be undermined, their returns limited by this at present unreconcilable discrepancy. Give the cops what they need - the good ones, that is - but, by God, make sure they are the good ones.