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Rome, 26 May 2023
MINISTRY OF THE INTERIOR
DEPARTMENT OF PUBLIC SAFETY
DEPARTMENT SECRETARIAT
STATE POLICE UNION RELATIONS OFFICE
OBJECT: Traffic Police Section of Pisa – Request for urgent intervention.
Our Provincial Secretariat of Pisa states that it has intervened several times with the Highway Police Department for Tuscany regarding the workloads of the local Highway Police Section and that it has received unsatisfactory responses and confirmation of an apparently unreasonable employment of personnel.
Last 3 May, to cite the last formal intervention of COISP Pisa, the Manager of the Polstrada Department was underlined that the staff of the aforementioned Section was constantly called “to operate as a single patrol, not only on the FI-PI-LI section, which is already a complex itinerary, but also on the Autopalio or the branch that connects Florence with the city of Siena in the Tuscan territory” and that this use ” obliges colleagues to travel over three hundred kilometers between round trips, although several other Specialty Offices were present on the Autopalio».
COISP Pisa asked the Section Manager for the reasons which led «to almost always use only the staff of the Pisa Section who must thus also cover that stretch of road exposing it to a heavy workload with the risks that could ensue» and asked for the reasons for the non-distribution of the service in question with a fair rotation among the various police offices near that stretch of road.
The answer came on 9 May. The Department Manager stated that: «Supervision, planned at a departmental level, is guaranteed by several Sections even regardless of the “territoriality” criterion, taking into account the available resources and the peculiarities of the context in which each Department operates».
Now, it is truly incomprehensible for this SO that the Administration is able to fulfill its supervisory duties on the Autopalio that connects Florence to Siena only with the use of the staff of the Pisa Traffic Police Section, and not otherwise, who in order to enter in the Autopalio (56 km of road) he must travel over 90 km (from 70 to 120 minutes considering the speed limits, the shape of the road and the traffic) and as many, clearly, to return to the headquarters, thus restricting the presence in the Autopalio at just 3 and a half hours when it’s good or even just over 2 hours.
It is also difficult to believe that the Administration does not have the availability of personnel in the offices closest to the Autopalio to whom it can carry out the road surveillance service in the same, unless it is decided to adopt the same method of employment with them, tens or even hundreds of kilometers away from its own territory.
Well, let’s hope that’s not the case!
Now, the “territoriality criterion” from which the Tuscany Highway Police Department believes it can easily derogate should perhaps be seen as a criterion of common sense. If the goal is to guarantee presence and safety in a certain arterial road for a duty shift, how can one think of doing so by calling personnel from the other end of the world who, as soon as they manage to reach that road, can stay there for a very short time having to, after a short while, return to your office for the end of working hours?
Where is the common sense in commanding staff who, when they arrive, are already tired enough having been forced to travel for more than an hour, but it can happen that they are even two hours? Perhaps we find the meaning of these provisions in the greater risk that we guarantee to our colleagues themselves? But isn’t that something that should be avoided?
And not only …
Since we are certainly not talking about arterial roads created in recent years but existing for many decades, on how many occasions, over the years, and in what way and in what terms, has the Department of Public Health informed the Department of Public Health of the need to assign personnel in those Sections where it was needed to ensure vigilance in the arterial road referred to in the matter on the basis of the “territoriality” criterion”? … in those Sections where “maybe” needed it, given that we certainly cannot exclude that in taking “account of the available resources and the peculiarities of the context in which each Department operates” the accounts may not be miscalculated due to a possible poor management capacity .
Or was the Central Administration never asked for anything, thinking that it was possible to dispose of one’s own personnel «regardless of the criterion of “territoriality”»?
Well, clearly that’s not how this administration works. You don’t do a good service to the community and you expose the Policemen to unnecessary risk.
Having said all this, this Office will want to intervene with the competent sectors of the Department so that the Polstrada Compartment for Tuscany, as well as others, can be illustrated, because the problem is detectable everywhere in the country, that it is certainly necessary to provide for a more appropriate remodeling of services that takes into account territoriality (which has its own logic) and personnel safety.
Awaiting your kindly urgent response, we welcome the occasion to send our best regards.
The National Secretariat of COISP
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