The Local Police of Torrevieja will add a further 25 new agents in the coming months.
Only 9 can be incorporated immediately because they have sought transfers from other local police forces. The local government has said that the rest will be recruited this summer. They must first, however, pass a training course run by the Valencian Institute of Public Security (IVASPE).
The new officers will be a welcome addition to a service that has seen it’s numbers fall alarmingly during the last decade. The official organizational chart determines that there should be 187 agents -one for every 2,000 residents.
Currently, the figure stands at 137: 120 officers and 17 managers, which is reinforced with a number of inspectors, although these also come from the staff. The recruitment process, which will fill the vacancies from a job bank in the coming weeks, could reach 155 officers, the number it had in 2010.
However, numbers are expected to fall even further because the Torrevejense staff has a high average age, with a large number of planned retirements.
It also has some 20 police officers working in support activities, officers who are not on the streets due to age or illness, an average of 10% of the total staff are on sick leave and 43 interim agents cannot carry a weapon or carry out many of the same functions as the more senior officers.
