Tor Bella Monaca, law enforcement officers held hostage by the gangs: attacks every day

The latest, in chronological order, were some financiers surrounded on Monday afternoon by a tangle of North Africans who came down from one of the buildings in via Ferdinando Quaglia after a 19-year-old Egyptian had been stopped for a check. He was found with drugs which he later ingested to avoid any type of dispute. Tor Bella Monaca district, the shape of drug dealing in the squares is changing: more and more foreigners, Tunisians and Egyptians are now the first to sell doses of cocaine, hashish and heroin. Other than Italians. And the “response” of pushers towards the police during checks changes. Verbal or physical aggression, intimidation, acts of self-harm.

The same observation comes from the Torbella carabinieri station as well as from the police: assaults on staff are daily “on the agenda” says Fabio Conore, secretary of Mosap, the autonomous police union movement. And the residents of Torbella know this even better, that large number of people who have been asking for redemption for the neighborhood for years and who instead find themselves helplessly observing what is happening. «These pushers – says Tizia Ronzio, president of the “Tor most beautiful” Association – are real loose cannons, they have no idea of ​​what they are doing also due to the fact that many of them deal as drug addicts. It is difficult for the police to manage these people during the control phase: if they attack they are accused, but for these foreigners, who also keep many residents in check, sneaking into houses and occupying them without a title.” They are many, they are numerous, they are compact. In jargon they call it “the hare” and it is the mechanism that allows a lookout at the sight of agents or soldiers to give the signal, attracting attention to himself and allowing others to get rid of the doses they have in their pockets or trousers.

THE MECHANISM OF “THE HARE”

“One of the pushers or lookouts draws attention to himself – explains an agent – in this way the others are given time to get rid of what they have on them, doses already packaged and ready to be sold”. Those who have nothing run no risk even if they are stopped in a drug dealer’s square. But it also happens that you manage to stop a drug dealer with the doses still in his pocket. So? The attacks begin which are initially verbal and serve to “forcefully” attract other pushers who, due to the mechanism explained by Ronzio, arrive, surround and “also film the responses of agents and soldiers with their cell phones – adds an investigator – thus hindering interventions”. On many occasions there is physical contact, not only between pushers and agents and soldiers but also between drug dealers, as happened most recently on Wednesday evening when a 24-year-old Tunisian was stabbed in the back in via dell’Archeologia. The areas where incidents of violence most often occur are adjacent to the well-known drug dealing squares of Largo Mengaroni, Via Scozza, Via dell’Archeologia. «In via Quaglia in the evening – concludes Tiziana Ronzio – there is a shop complete with chairs to sit while waiting for customers, those who are stopped then go out and return and for those who don’t return there is a new pusher ready to take their place. It is bad to use the term “militarization” but in Tor Bella Monaca some points of the neighborhood would need permanent garrisons. Unfortunately here it is the only way.”

© ALL RIGHTS RESERVED

Read the full article at
The messenger