Fighting crime

By Jason Moore THE Palma city council wants to re-introduce serenos a sort of neighbourhood watch scheme which was first introduced during the Franco era. In other words every area of the city will have a watchman. Now, while I applaud any move which will help reduce crime I do feel that once again this is a role which should be undertaken by the police. Effectively in Majorca at the moment there are four police forces; the National Police, the Guardia Civil, the local police and in Palma, a small army of traffic wardens. If Palma Mayor Catalina Cirer gets her way we will soon have a fifth, the serenos. All these forces will need their dedicated civil servants and white collar workers to support them. You can safely say that red-tape will increase by a fifth and also co-ordination between the different forces could suffer as a direct result. What is needed in Palma is a single police force which would use all the present resources but reduce the amount of red-tape because there would be a single command structure. I am sure that Spain is one of the few countries in the world which has three police forces. The crime rate in the Balearics is higher than the national average and it is time that more energy and resources were devoted to fighting the war on crime. The serenos was a good idea 30 years ago but I doubt they have a place in the modern-day war on crime.