“We have fought against the mafia, we have conquered terrorism and each year we maintain the public order in 20 thousand public events. Yet, all this is forgotten, right after a soccer fan gets clubbed.” This is how National Police Union Secretary Giuseppe Tiani explained the current situation of distress affecting law enforcement agencies. They used to be admired and respected, but today they seem to have been relegated to minor roles; and at times compelled, thanks to the media, to play the “villain.” According to Tiani, there are many reasons for this, starting from “a country that kowtows to lobbies and to the well-structured power of the parties,” the large space “given to anarchists and other opposition movements” (always marching against law enforcement) and the mind frame of certain citizens who “don’t believe in our justice model and those who administer it anymore.”
Without forgetting, for the sake of intellectual honesty, certain “negative episodes involving the police,” such as the Aldrovandi case (the kid killed by police officers in Ferrara, editor’s note). To this, one should add the fact that “the judiciary and law enforcement are seen as one” explained the head of SIAP. There is, therefore, a tendency to forget that their roles are different. “Our function is different from the one of the judges,” underscored Tiani. “We need to face every national emergency.” To prove his point, the union leader speaks openly: “Prefectures and police headquarters have become a trash bin for responsibilities that nobody else wants to have,” he said. And how can we come out of this situation? “The state must recover its authority and politicians should pay better attention to their behavior. A further problem that is vexing the Police these days is the one about pay, given that every hope for a raise has ended up under the scissors of the spending review approved by the government, in order to meet EU’s requirements regarding the reduction of public expenses.
And here Tiani insisted in providing a clarification: “Our complaints aren’t related to contract renegotiations, given that we are aware of the millions of unemployed citizens. We only want that our salaries not be undercut, given that they have already been resized, due to a provision issued by the previous Berlusconi government.” After all, according to the head of SIAP, it is possible to find spending reduction solutions in the security sector. At the territorial level, for example, there is “a proliferation of spending for traffic officers, who are improperly defined as local police. Given the lack of a unified regulation, every municipality can create the police it wants based on treasury funds. We need a framework law that establishes certain rules valid for all urban administrative bodies.” On the often dreaded unification of law enforcement agencies, Tiani’s ideas are clear. He admits that, in the course of time, “certain tasks have overlapped and some rationalization is in order,” even though “diversity is a value. For example, the police are in charge of protecting the public order and the security of the country and, in this task, it is supported by the Carabinieri, who maintain a capillary presence in the territory. For this reason,” he concluded “their merger wouldn’t be a wise choice, because their distribution around the country and their duties vis-à-vis citizens are different.”
Generally speaking, according to this important trade-union representative, the police officer’s image is damaged by bad politics and distorted information. And this should be like a slap in the face for all those who take advantage of isolated episodes to foment a destabilizing climate, rather than showing respect for the constant sacrifice of law enforcement agents.
Translation provided by ProLingua
