A GERMAN police officer enjoyed a busman's holiday when he spent a week with his Burnley counterparts.

Olaf Seifert, from Saxony, was invited to come to England by PC Dave Pascoe, a member of Pennine Division's armed response team.

Dave said: "We are both members of the International Police Association and I met him at a seminar in Germany and invited him to come here.

"He spent eight days with us to find out what our policing system is all about."

Mr Seifert said: "I am a police officer in the police college and I am getting experience of the British system. It is my first time in England."

He was in the station when the police firearms amnesty was concluded and was there when the force opened boxes containing more than 100 weapons including replica handguns, gangland knives and machine gun ammunition.

He said: "This is a new experience for me because I have never been involved in anything of this kind in Germany.

"At the college we have only two kinds of police weapon, but we do show students other types of weapons so they know the different ones they will come across."

Before leaving for the bright lights of London on his way back to Germany, Olaf had time to think about which of his memories of Burnley would stay with him.

He said: "I had a really fantastic time, but the weather was not so good. It was very interesting.

"I like the people and I like to meet police officers and speak with them about the problems we both face.

"I must admit that some of the problems faced by us in Germany are some of the problems that police officers in Burnley have to deal with."

He plans to return in the future to learn even more about Pennine policing. "It was really too short a time. I hope that I can do it again sometime. Some things we handle differently, like in Germany all police officers carry a gun, but a lot of the problems that we have with criminal activity are the same", he added.