Federico Aldrovandi had 18 years in September 2005. He was returning home at dawn, after an evening with friends. Four policemen, three men and a woman, stopped him and Federico died. Today the ruling of the court of Ferrara has sentenced them to three years and six months in prison for "culpable excess" because their disproportionate use of force caused the death of the boy. During the attempted arrest the officers beat Federico with truncheons up to break them, stepped on him and ignored his requests for help.
A story very similar to that of Riccardo Rasman, in which policemen however had only the minimum sentence of six months of jail. A story that unfortunately remember many others events in which the italian police have behaved in a shameful manner, from the G8 in Genoa to the death of Manuel Eliantonio. And similar cases have been many. Too many. Up to the cases of Riccardo and Federico was very difficult that police officers coul be convicted of manslaughter in Italy. But in these cases the behavior of the agents was so absurd and cruel that the lack of a conviction would have seemed intolerable.
Even if the punishment for the officials who caused the death of Federico Aldrovandi is much higher than that of agents that caused the death of Riccardo Rasman the fact remains that such actions taken by ordinary citizens would be punished much more severely, at least with an accuse of unintentional murder, if not simply murder.
The officials, they say, have tried to do their duty and certainly did not want to kill. The defendants of the agents in Aldrovandi case have argued that the boy would have violently resisted and died not for the actions of police officers and for the numerous injuries and wounds in the face, but for the drugs he had taken. The clubs would have broken because too "fragile."
The family of the boy has always denied that Federico was a drug addict, and moreover the presence of drugs (opiates) and alcohol in blood levels were so minimal that it couldn't justify even a fine while driving. Instead, Federico was on foot and he was killed. Besides, It seems much more difficult to explain how it is possible that four people of average size had such serious problems in handcuffing an unarmed boy of normal weight to have to break truncheons on his head and step on him.
Same story for the Rasman case: Riccardo was tall and robust, but three police officers to handcuff him deemed necessary to tie him with wire, step on him and splash his blood for the whole room? Federico and Riccardo were not dangerous criminals. They were two boys who at the most, if they had been arrested rather than killed, could be charged for "disturbing the public peace."
Can you kill someone because he made noise? As rightly said the writer Carlo Lucarelli on the blog opened by the family of Federico, who managed to prevent his case to fade into silence, things like that can happen if you are stopped by the Gestapo in Nazi Germany, but cannot be tolerated in a democratic country.
As often happens in these cases, the police unions have been steadfastly to the side of the accused, and this seems particularly sad. Because such behavior by the police destroy public confidence in law enforcement and dishonor the body to which belong the agents that use it. Police is authorized to use force for self-defense and to defend citizens, but this force must be used in a proportionate way and with respect for human rights of those who are apprehended, because all those arrested are not guilty until a possible conviction in a trial and because there are not law permitting torture or death penalty in Italy. If there are people in law enforcement who haven't a clear notion of that then these people are certainly not suited to defend citizens from crime.
Carlo Giuliani, Gabriele Sandri, Marcello Lonzi, Aldo Bianzino and many other similar cases are a very excessive number of "mistakes" in order not to think that there is something very wrong with the behavior of some representatives of law enforcement in Italy.
To prevent similar things from happening so often we need a judiciary that is not afraid to prosecute the guilty, a free information that is not afraid to tell and censor these behaviors, we need police forces that are not afraid to remove and isolate those who use violence instead of law. Until a few years ago Italy lacked all these three things. Today perhaps impunity is ending. The judiciary has returned verdicts, the information in part is missing, but in part tells, thanks largely to the web.
When will we see the third element necessary to have a police force free of such unspeakable acts? When will we see the majority of law enforcement distance themselves from colleagues who have used violence unlawfully and criminally?
Francesco Defferrari
The officials, they say, have tried to do their duty and certainly did not want to kill. The defendants of the agents in Aldrovandi case have argued that the boy would have violently resisted and died not for the actions of police officers and for the numerous injuries and wounds in the face, but for the drugs he had taken. The clubs would have broken because too "fragile."
The family of the boy has always denied that Federico was a drug addict, and moreover the presence of drugs (opiates) and alcohol in blood levels were so minimal that it couldn't justify even a fine while driving. Instead, Federico was on foot and he was killed. Besides, It seems much more difficult to explain how it is possible that four people of average size had such serious problems in handcuffing an unarmed boy of normal weight to have to break truncheons on his head and step on him.
Same story for the Rasman case: Riccardo was tall and robust, but three police officers to handcuff him deemed necessary to tie him with wire, step on him and splash his blood for the whole room? Federico and Riccardo were not dangerous criminals. They were two boys who at the most, if they had been arrested rather than killed, could be charged for "disturbing the public peace."
Can you kill someone because he made noise? As rightly said the writer Carlo Lucarelli on the blog opened by the family of Federico, who managed to prevent his case to fade into silence, things like that can happen if you are stopped by the Gestapo in Nazi Germany, but cannot be tolerated in a democratic country.
As often happens in these cases, the police unions have been steadfastly to the side of the accused, and this seems particularly sad. Because such behavior by the police destroy public confidence in law enforcement and dishonor the body to which belong the agents that use it. Police is authorized to use force for self-defense and to defend citizens, but this force must be used in a proportionate way and with respect for human rights of those who are apprehended, because all those arrested are not guilty until a possible conviction in a trial and because there are not law permitting torture or death penalty in Italy. If there are people in law enforcement who haven't a clear notion of that then these people are certainly not suited to defend citizens from crime.
Carlo Giuliani, Gabriele Sandri, Marcello Lonzi, Aldo Bianzino and many other similar cases are a very excessive number of "mistakes" in order not to think that there is something very wrong with the behavior of some representatives of law enforcement in Italy.
To prevent similar things from happening so often we need a judiciary that is not afraid to prosecute the guilty, a free information that is not afraid to tell and censor these behaviors, we need police forces that are not afraid to remove and isolate those who use violence instead of law. Until a few years ago Italy lacked all these three things. Today perhaps impunity is ending. The judiciary has returned verdicts, the information in part is missing, but in part tells, thanks largely to the web.
When will we see the third element necessary to have a police force free of such unspeakable acts? When will we see the majority of law enforcement distance themselves from colleagues who have used violence unlawfully and criminally?
Francesco Defferrari
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