Naples, Sant’Antonio Abate district. A group of kids, some apparently minors, whistles, screams, throws boxes full of odds and ends. It’s not a fight. The target of the crowd is a mobile department of the police: five agents backing away, raise their shields, defend themselves but without counterattacking. Firecrackers explode. People in the street watch, someone makes a video. Nobody intervenes. The most rowdy are five or six boys, one of them is armed with a long stick. They throw objects, perhaps stones, in the direction of the policemen. Then they sing a song: “A single cry, a single alarm, a cop on fire”. Those present laugh.
The video that ilGiornale.it exclusive public must be seen a couple of times before really realizing what it means. Everything takes place in the evening between Friday and Saturday, the night known in Naples as the evening of the “fucarizzi ‘and Sant’Antuono”. It is an ancient custom deeply felt in Campania in which citizens turn on numerous bonfire along the streets in honor of the patron saint of animals. It had to be just the way to honor the pious hermit, and instead in the neighborhood that bears his name the evening turned into the occasion for a real hunt for the policeman.
The images, taken from a cell phone, are all too sharp. The first seconds show the patrol of policemen backing away under the insults and the throwing of objects of citizens present in the street. In the background, via Sant’Antonio Abate, not far from the church of Sant’Anna in Capuana. Some of the kids, after being able to “chase” the agents, enter and leave a door by dragging trees and large poles, probably to be used for bonfires. It is not yet clear whether they were stealing them. In the street you can also see children and everything takes place in a few minutes. Around one in the morning, police sources told of a final bulletin with some bruised police officers and similar incidents that occurred in different areas of the city. Another was attacked in the San Ferdinando area patrol and, the sources explain, there would also be minors arrested. A hell.
The agents and firefighters are deployed by the authorities to prevent the fires from turning into fires throughout the city. And it is not the first time that the “fucarazzi” have caused a sensation: a year ago the newspapers spoke of a “guerrilla scene” and streets blocked at crossroads for the lighting of bonfires. But this time it’s different: there are cops in the way. “Seeing those pictures is humiliating and aberrant – attack Andrea Cecchini, secretary of Italia Celere – The agents are humiliated and those who have to protect men in uniform do not do it, even knowing what is happening “. Among the operators in Naples the images are causing some irritation. There is talk of” far west “and of too many “aggressions” that now repeat “every day”. “Violence against law enforcement is unheard of, because those who attack us live in total impunity – continues Cecchini – The policemen who are put to flight by children it’s a pitiful scene. In no democratic country would happen “. Impunity is linked to the” forced inertia “of the police. “Today it is more convenient to show ‘nice’ policemen than operational – he concludes – The media and politics speak only of the perception of security, a perception that is convenient only to those who have to make a career. While the real problems send us to court or in the hospital. The police are not enough to show you: we lack means, tools, personnel. Instead they do not allow us to intervene, we are helpless and unarmed. We now live in ‘public disorder’, an optimal situation for organized crime that enjoys the gaps in the State. This is the reality and Minister Lamorgese must now intervene: work should begin on the intervention protocols “.
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