You were lucky. I was mugged at the Avenida de Libertade and tried to report to the police in German, English, Spanish and French. We finally agreed on my very poor Portugese and after a while they gracefully accepted to understand some Spanish words.

Normally people treat you with respect when they are addressed with respect.

So tell us, Simplon, how exactly would you feel if I said, you know what - the cop's right: you should have learned to speak better English (at the time).

Der Satz ist kaputt.

(Sie sollten die Sprache Ihres Wohnortes lernen)

It was a collector's vehicle ...
What I'm saying is, their attitude problem is bigger than their language problem.

Mwahh ahhhhahaha hahaha hahhaahh aahhha hhahaahhha aaaa!

You keep on believing it if you want. I refer you to my earlier post about my first few days in Basel.

i had my car keys in my hand aswell as my phone.......... to be honest i was scared and in shock. my husband has been in hospital for the past month or so ( because a swiss doctor made a mistake during routine surgery, anyway thats another thread all together). i have been working full time and visiting him everyday till around 10pm, when the nurses kick me out....so obviously i wasnt on my game, i would of ran after him shouting ( IN ENGLISH) if it were a normal day....but i stood there .... i thought i might get stabbed......not likely because its switzerland but i honestly thought i was in london town for a second and my natural response was to avoid getting knifed.

We had our car's window smashed and the radio stolen, with a lot of damage to the dashboard- when in Amsterdam. The Police spoke very good English- and told us in no uncertain words, that anybody who came and parked in Amsterdam, even in an official car-park, without removing the radio (which was not possible at the time for our model) - deserved to get 'done' - oh how they laughed. Excellent English though.

Very sorry to hear about your husband and hope he gets well soon. The policeman had no excuse for his behaviour, but perhaps had an excuse for his lack of English. I agree that overall British police are a much much better at public relations than the Swiss.

Anticipated EF response:

*outraged*

You useless victim. Honestly it is all your fault. As for your husband. Useless too. I mean fancy being hospitalised by a Swiss Dr. We all know that Swiss healthcare is second to none, there's no way they could have made a mistake. You've corrupted him, clearly, with your "foreign ways".

I asume you get yourself informed before coming to Switzerland and therefore know that English is not a local language. You therefore have two possibilities: Either you use every excuse not to learn German or you get to grips and learn the language. If you prefer the first solution: fine. But, please spare me any complaints about locals not speaking your language.

Well, if we're going to toss out anecdotal evidence, I have to say that the cops at the Geneva airport were quite friendly when my wallet was stolen on the train. Even found somebody who spoke enough English that we could get by - I'm fluent in German, but my French is limited to hello, how are you.

While it would be nice if the cops spoke English, if they don't, you don't have a right to expect it. If they hadn't found someone who spoke English, I'd have found a different solution - a coworker, a colleague, asked the nice lady at the bank who pointed me at the cops after I reported my bank card stolen, etc. The onus was on me. And while losing your bag/wallet/whatever is annoying, frustrating, and possibly scary... it's not traumatic. There's almost always a solution if you keep calm and look.

I'm going to stop working shortly, but I'll be back to watch this thread once I get some popcorn. Haven't we done this a few times before already?

__________________
I'm likely typing from an iPad. Please disregard odd word usage.

I agreed with them when they told me. British not English full of mistakes with a Swiss accent was defintely too much for them. But at least I tried to communicate with the locals in their native language...

I agree up to here...

...sure, not traumatic like being a car wreck or being shot, but still enough to be classed as violent crime in some instances.

All of my 6 or so interactions with the police have been neutral or negative. None positive. I'm happy for you re your wallet, but I'm not going to agree with a statement that says

...

<shrugs shoulders>

Well in that case we'll just have to agree to disagree.

Did you react at the police station in Basel like this? The police officers have my simpathy

Nope. I always use the respect route and stick to that. I just don't agree with your statement that respect is met with respect.

In my instances respect has usually been met with indifference or condescension.

HTH.

Especially in a country where a third of the country is not Swiss, it isn't an unreasonable expectation that those in public service speak some english. I blame dubbing of every English program and movie. Up in the nordics, not only do they speak 2-3 local languages, but everyone just about (at least in the cities) speaks English (which can make it difficult for the English speaker to learn to speak the local lingo) as they understand the need for it outside of the nordic countries. With the exception of kids movies, all tv programs and movies are subtitled, not dubbed.

I might also add that my car was robbed here - first time I've been robbed in 20 years, even after living in some rough parts of the wild, wild US. Don't believe the tourism brochures and live like you would in a big city that makes no such claims of low crime.

The vast majority of the third that is not Swiss is either German, Italian, French or Austrian - or, can you imagine - learned the language. So can we please stop the "we all don't know it" stuff - the "English only" crowd is in fact really small. An airport cop or one at the main station should speak English, one in Enge does not need to. As it looks, the one at the main station actually did... but that's absolutley not the point here - the point is that the cop was rude.

I made some indifferent to negative experiences with the StaPo ZH myself, so I am in no way defending them. It doesn't matter what languages the guy speaks or not, weather he likes immigration or votes SVP, his attitude was unprofessional. End of story.

Is "si" the Swiss Italian version of Lei?

Well put, Pats.

As far as I can see there is nobody interested into asking the police directly what to do when confronted with such a situation.

It's just bashing the police and/or each other. As helpful this forum can be, sometimes is just plain stupid.

Also in UK, the city council and Police go out of their way to communicate with minorities, I have seen loads of leaflets, posters in Urdu, Hindi, Polish, Farsi, you name it and they pay freelance interpreters when needed starting from Heathrow all the way to the criminal courts ..And this in a country where the local language is at worldly as it gets. Respect!