Dedicated tourist police exist in many popular destinations, particularly across parts of Asia, the Middle East, Latin America and southern Europe, and where they exist they are genuinely useful: officers assigned to tourist areas, more likely to speak English, and experienced with exactly your problems, lost passports, theft reports, scams and disputes with vendors or drivers. Several countries run 24/7 tourist hotlines alongside, and some tourism ministries operate multilingual assistance lines that can conference in interpreters.
Where no separate tourist police exist, the general emergency number still works and big-city police stations usually manage some English or find someone who does.
Before the trip, check the official tourism site of your destination for whether a tourist police service and hotline exist, and save the numbers. And register your trip with your own foreign ministry's traveler program, which plugs you into consular alerts and makes emergency support faster.