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ARCHIVED - 3 tourists beat up a police officer in Barcelona after mistaking him for a thief
The police officer was trying to prevent a theft and paid for it by getting assaulted
Three tourists have been arrested in Barcelona after they brutally assaulted an officer of the Guardia Urbana who was in plain clothes when he was mistaken for a thief.
The policeman was trying to prevent a robbery in the Barceloneta neighbourhood when the three assailants lunged at him and kicked him several times in the back, chest and head, leaving him unconscious.
As seen in a video taken from the balcony of someone who lived on that street, the victim tried to stop the aggression by warning them that he was a police officer, but the tourists seemed not to understand or care, and kept attacking him.
The events took place in Plaça del Mar, in the Barceloneta neighbourhood. It all began when the officer, dressed in civilian clothes, noticed that a watch was being stolen from one of the men and, when he tried to intervene to prevent the theft, the tourists brutally beat him up after mistaking him for the thief.
The assailants took off but were soon located in a nearby hotel and arrested for the crime of assault and battery. The policeman has already been medically discharged, but has been taken off duty.
Crime on the rise in Barcelona
The incident has unleashed the building controversy in Barcelona about the rising wave of thefts, pickpocketing and muggings. Some commentators have said that the behaviour of the three men is the culmination of tourists’ exasperation with so much crime targeted at them in the city.
Others, including the opposition in Barcelona City Council, have said it points to a lack of security for some time in Barcelona, and is asking for decisions to taken to ramp up police presence.
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