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The Italians are rather primitive in their understanding of civil liberties and at times it feels like you're under martial law. They still have national
service here so the streets are full of young soldiers, sailors
and airmen.
Even the police, the firemen and of course the traffic wardens all wear unnecessarily elaborate brocaded uniforms with those high-crowned shiny-peaked 'Nazi hats' which eastern Europeans are so fond of. All the police carry guns, which, as an Englishman, I find scary, and indeed, offensive. On top of all this, they have something here called the 'Carabiniere' who are a kind of military wing of the police force, and they are also much in evidence on the streets.
They smiled for this picture but didn't loosen their grip on those machine guns. I mean, is there a war on or something? Carabiniere stand around the city all day brandishing machine guns for goodness sake! Talk about overkill! The permesso di soggiorno (a permit for foreigners, including EEC nationals) is also handled by the police department (and handled inefficiently), which has the unpleasant effect of making harmless, law-abiding visitors like you and I feel like some sort of criminal scum. It is even part of the Traffic Warden's duties to call on immigrants and long-term visitors to Italy at their houses and track them down if they are not found at home where they are expected to be. Italian drivers (particularly
in Rome) are incredibly dangerous and take no notice of the few
safe driving laws that there are. Every day my life here is at
risk from dangerous drivers,and the roads are lined with bunches
of flowers in remembrance of people who have died in road accidents.
However, traffic cops do little more than sit basking at the
side of the road wearing leather jackets, sunglasses and guns,
trying
to look like Starsky and Hutch, only randomly pulling in the
odd motorist just to keep their report-books full. Click here for more about driving in Italy.
I would prefer to see the immigration administration handled
properly by a specially dedicated division of the Civil Service,
and the police given wholly over to the business of actually
catching criminals on the street (in particular, dangerous drivers
- which is almost everybody) instead of just playing at it. In
England we tend to regard our traffic cops and traffic wardens
as tedious, tiresome and pedantic, yet I would dearly love to
see the kind of near-zero tolerance our British traffic bobbies
specialise in adopted here in Rome. Furthermore, one can only
assume that the Italian police are just as ineffectual in other
areas of law enforcement as they are at road-traffic management.
Thus I find it difficult
to admire or feel safe in a nation which fills its streets with
so many strutting young men in uniforms carrying guns, when at
the same time, all these armed 'guardians of the state' are actually
doing so very little to protect me from law-breakers.
I do not feel protected, but threatened.
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