VITERBO – A historic center under siege, where acts of aggression take place daily before everyone’s eyes. Brawls take place under the porticoes of the Municipality of Viterbo, bottle fights in the nearby Via Ascenzi, accounts settled in broad daylight in Piazza Martiri d’Unità and traders attacked under the eyes of terrified citizens who do not dare to intervene.
The latest attack was on Friday against a goldsmith in Via Cesare Dobici, who vented on social media (READ EVERYTHING).
The daily scenario in Viterbo today is this. A city that “has been abandoned by the institutions for too many years”, as some citizens report, with a suffering historic center left to itself.
Events, lighting and above all a fixed presence on the part of the police forces have been requested for a long time and loudly by most of the traders in the historic center, tired of having to watch their backs while they lower the shutters of their shop. Some choose to reduce working hours “so we have fewer problems, even if we get lost”, others are on the verge of exploding: “The next one I find, I’ll put my hands on him”.
The warnings and Daspo issued by the Viterbo Police Headquarters are of little or no use, judged as “useless measures” by the population as “those who commit crimes then come back not caring about the prohibitions” (READ ALL).
The Sacrario area, the heart of the historic center, has now stopped pulsating. Those who work here are afraid or exasperated. “We all know who they are, but nobody does anything and if someone intervenes after two days they come back here to shout, deal and threaten passers-by,” says another local businessman.
Those who speak, again out of fear, almost always choose to remain anonymous. But it is enough to read any newspaper to understand the situation in Viterbo. The administration, for its part, seems totally helpless and almost seems to choose to close its eyes rather than react.
There had been talk of cameras, more lighting and even neighborhood police during the election campaign. Measures that do not even remotely seem to be arriving for the historic center, where more and more shutters are lowered forever and those few who remain have now lost hope.
Many are asking for at least “a fixed steering wheel at the Shrine” (READ EVERYTHING). A sort of placebo or at least a deterrent for that area that is widely defined as “the drug dealing square”. “Every evening after 6pm – says a trader – this square is transformed. It is filled with drug dealers and drunk people who go from club to club causing problems. They buy beer for pennies at the supermarket, we see them go out with entire cases and promptly find empty bottles in front of our shops in the morning. We cannot continue like this.”
The powder keg, although the administration continues to cut ribbons and say that “the situation is under control”, will certainly not explode (READ EVERYTHING). As rightly underlined by the police, these are “episodes of petty crime”. However, daily episodes, which are slowly causing the historic center of Viterbo to slide into a lightless and bottomless abyss.
Viterbo – Trader attacked at the Shrine by a group: “No one helped me, so we can’t move forward”
