SENIOR police are to travel to Poland to recruit new officers in a groundbreaking move to tackle crime in the country's biggest migrant community.
Police Scotland officers are already in talks with law-enforcement agencies in Warsaw to hire staff to help deal with everything from international murder investigations to missing persons inquiries.
The new national force already has a handful of officers recruited from Scotland's Polish community, but recognises it needs more expertise and has launched a recruitment drive abroad for the first time.
As revealed last week, nine per cent of all police incidents involve a foreign national, a figure thought to have more than doubled since mass EU migration began a decade ago.
Deputy Chief Constable Iain Livingstone said: "We have an increasingly diverse workforce. We have a number of officers recruited who, for example, have Polish ancestry or were born and raised in Poland,
"But we are taking some pro-active work to link in with colleagues in Warsaw - focusing on Poland because of the number of economic migrants - to get some Polish officers over to work with us in Scotland."
London's Metropolitan Police has already recruited officers from Poland and Romania and Mr Livingstone believes Police Scotland, the UK's second-biggest force, is now similarly able to focus more clearly on the increasing internationalisation of crime.
Some seven per cent of the Scottish population was born outside the UK, according to the last census, a figure mirrored by the share of foreign nationals in custody.
However, dealing with foreign nationals who come into contact with the police, whether as suspects or victims, poses serious challenges to a force not nearly as diverse as the country it polices.
It is not clear how many Polish officers Police Scotland is looking to recruit or what exactly they would do. However, insiders suggest Poles would be able to help liaise with agencies back home and communities here, as well as provide cultural and linguistic support to Scottish colleagues. There were 55,000 Poles in the country at the time of the 2011 census.
Maciej Dokurno of Fife Migrant Forum, who previously trained Scottish police in how to deal with his compatriots, said: "It is really good that the police understand they have to try to improve their cultural, linguistic and legal understanding of Polish issues.
"I don't think the Polish community would particularly want to see Polish officers patrol Scottish streets, but they would welcome their help in training officers here and provide valuable contacts in helping with issues like missing persons. There are lots of cases when somebody goes missing from Scotland or Poland and turns up in the other country."
Mr Dokurno would also like to see Scottish police seconded to forces in Poland, to help them pick up a language now as commonly spoken in Scotland as Gaelic and understand some of the wider social and crime issues affecting both countries.
Spanish police this summer called on UK police to work alongside them in areas with large populations of British migrants and holidaymakers.
However, Mr Livingstone stressed Scotland's main link to continental law-enforcement agencies was through Europol, the Hague-based police hub. Referrals to Europol from Scotland have tripled since the new national force came into being. Europol is funding an increasing number of joint investigation units involving Scottish police.
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