Ah, this is the community engagement project that was discussed here with such gusto a couple of weeks ago. Hurrah!

Seeing as much of Shropshire borders Wales, perhaps they could consider giving police officers lessons in Welsh too. That would tick another couple of boxes.

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Do Polish policemen have English lessons? No? Why is that? They think its more important to patrol the streets preventing crime.

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What and possibly miss the donut queue?

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Don’t more Welsh people live on the Shropshire borders than Polish people? And if so when are the police going to learn how to speak Welsh?

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To be blunt, police officers (however ‘good’ or ‘bad’ at their jobs you all seem so certain of) are still people, any training they get adds to their skills in whatever subject? The army teaches its officers lots of skills that aren’t used in the field everyday, we don’t penalise it!

If you think about it as a positive, with polish trained officers, where they’d normally have to pay taxpayers money to bring an interpreter in, sitting interviews, using up a lot more time, these officers would have the knowledge to conduct a basic interview, saving both money and time.

As with the welsh reference, I know several officers that have served for west mercia that grew up in Wales who already speak the language.. But we can’t all take digs at the welsh now can we?

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It would be far more cost effective & efficient to use a computer terminal within the police station and use http://translator.live.com
or other suitable software!

Byłoby znacznie bardziej efektywne i wydajne używać terminalu komputera oraz http://translator.live.com
lub inne odpowiednie oprogramowanie!

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To be fair maybe police should be trained more as a whole. In some cases, the training is less than a professional security consultant. I did my cuff and restraints course and it was a lot more in depth to protect my back.

Polish have been part of our communities for years, Polish are people like you and I, they haven’t got it in for our government, although in some areas they do lack the education, they are hard workers.

I still stand by my point that less arrests and station interviews will be needed if officers can get some grounds on the situation at the scene of an incident.

Let them do it, at least if they carry on ‘failing at their job’ we can send them to Poland.

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Why don’t we get the Police to learn Urdu, Hindi, Punjabi? There are probably more native speakers of these tongues than Polish in the Shropshire area.

As a member of the Royal Navy I travel very widely, and despite what most of you would like to believe, in most countries of Europe, particularly the Baltic states, most people DO NOT speak English, or any other language other than their own, so the old argument of ‘everyone else makes the effort to learn another language’ falls short.

The bottom line is, immigrants to this country should speak either English, Gaelic or Welsh to fluent levels.

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Grant,

Would you therefore insist that the many British people who live in Spain, France or elsewhere are also fluent in the language of their host countries? Or are the rules in your view of the world different for us if we choose to go abroad?

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