Since Spain is one of the world's tourism powerhouses, with millions of tourists going there every year, it is inevitable that many of them are forced to visit, unfortunately all too often, a police department, some victims of thieves, muggers, or of other crimes, and others for breaking the law themselves. Despite the effort that the State Department has made in incentivizing language training for its new police officers, it is common for police departments (at least in costal regions) to rely on interpreters to mediate between officers and foreigners. This paper analyzes the role of interpreters/translators in this field: what type of training is required of them, how they are classified at work, what type of work they most often do (consecutive interpretations and translations in full view of police reports and prisoners' statements, transcriptions of recordings, translations of documents received at the police station, etc.), as well as the improvements that this service may need.