Off-duty Met Police officers chase alleged thief down in Barcelona while Sergeant was on his stag do

A group of off-duty British cops jumped into action while on a stag do in Spain after a man allegedly attempted to rob the restaurant they were sitting in.

Sergeant Erin Emin, 30, was celebrating his stag do in Barcelona when the man allegedly attempt to thieve electrical items and equipment off of the restaurant counter he and his group, made up of four fellow off-duty police officers, were sitting in at the time. As the man attempted to make his escape with the loot, Sgt Emin said “instinct” kicked in and the group chased him down and waited for Spanish police to arrive.

He said: “I think policing is more of an instinct than anything else. I’m a police officer. It’s my job. Wherever we are, whether in Spain, it doesn’t matter, I have to do what’s right.”

Sgt Emin, who is based in Enfield, added: “We were in a restaurant on the main strip, waiting for food to come, and he made his way over to the bar area where the counters are and then he jumped over the counter and that’s when he caught our attention. He started to ransack the tills and take electrical goods such as the iPads and iPhones, whatever else was there, before he made his way around and then sprinted outside of the restaurant and instantly we stood up and gave chase.

“As soon as he saw me he started running and obviously I didn’t have a chance to think, ‘Oh, wait, I’m not a police officer, and I’m not in the UK, I’m in Spain’. I’m a nobody here, but to be honest, that didn’t even cross my mind. It was a case of just getting him stopped. It’s wrong. What’s wrong is wrong. Common sense has to apply here as well and that’s why we got him detained as quickly as possible.”

He said that his group chased the man for around 50 meters before they caught him, recovering all of the items he had attempted to steal before taking him back to the restaurant. Sgt Emin said that the staff in the restaurant seemed “really shocked because they didn’t expect the whole table of their customers to get up and get this chap and recover all their goods”, adding that when Spanish cops arrived at the scene, it was “high fives all around” after they realised they were off-duty officers.

He added: “I’m quite known within my organisation for arresting people off duty – here in the UK, wherever I go, I always end up attracting or coming across crime, which is really strange, so for me, it’s just another day. Some others might see it as, ‘You’re a lunatic, you’ve got no protective gear, what are you doing?’, but I’ve done it numerous times before.”

When asked if he would ever switch from his job as a police officer, Sgt Emin said: “No, and it’s the same for my other colleagues as well. They’re really well-respected police officers and collectively that’s why we all get on so well. It’s because we’re all like-minded and committed.”