The usual “verbal diarrhoea”?

There’s naturally been an incredible amount of “verbal diarrhoea” surrounding the Catania-Palermo derby and the death of the police officer there. I say verbal diarrhoea simply because we’ve already gone through this a zillion times. Italian sociologists, anthropologists, shrinks, priests, homemakers, kids, journalists, you name it, have jumped on the “anti-stadium” violence with their theories on what to do about the appalling violence in Italy’s stadia.

Many think that by having secure stadia there won’t be violence outside the stadia (many aren’t yet up to par in Italy so this Sunday when the championship will kick off again, many games, such as Fiorentina-Udinese, will be played behind closed doors with no spectators). That’s like saying that if a curfew is imposed in Baghdad that the massive violence there will cease overnight! The main problem are the lax laws in Italy and the poor reinforcement of them, not so much what goes on in a soccer stadium.

A case comes to mind just yesterday: three elderly Chilean men (one even 80 years old!) were caught on a Genoa bus. Pinching the women’s bums? No, they were pick-pocketing the passengers. Nothing new with that as in Italy, especially in Rome and its (in)famous bus No. 64 (the one that goes from the main train station, Termini, to St. Peter’s), there are usually hordes of pick-pockets (on the No. 64 once undercover cops found—all at the same time—10 pick-pockets all working together! They must have probably been going to a pick-pocket convention in town. The Rome subway is also often full of gypsy pick-pockets).

These three coy Chilean pensioners weren’t at it for the first time. No siree, they had already done the same thing in Parma, Trieste and in other Italian cities (the cops have a long file on them). And yet, there they were again, out on the streets doing what they do best, pick-pocketing. Ditto many years ago in Rome on a tram which goes by “Porta Portese”, the Sunday flea market. At one point, the driver warned passengers that pick-pockets had just gotten on board. Some foreign tourists (Americans), in a usually-logical way of thinking, said to themselves, “Well, if you KNOW that there are pick-pockets on board, why doesn’t anyone do something to arrest them”? No, in true Italian “humane” style, the driver was just being nice by “advising” passengers to be careful. It didn’t even cross his mind to call the cops.

If Italian authorities can’t throw away in the slammer for awhile a bunch of harmless old pick-pockets, are they possibly going to stop kids from hurling bricks at cops or launching Katyusha-style missiles at opposing fans? Then there’s the ever-reigning presence of the mafia in Italy (some suspect that the Mob is also behind hooligans receiving drugs and weapons in southern Italy). That’s something that’s going to be incredibly difficult to change in Italy. As the late, great Giovanni Falcone once said (the anti-mafia judge blown up by Cosa Nostra in 1993 near Palermo), a Sicilian himself: “ALL Sicilians are Mafiosi, just a small percentage are criminals”! It’s a way of life, a way of thinking for many Italians.

I really doubt things will change much, especially when in certain parts of Italy efficiency and honesty are NOT on the tips of everyone’s tongues (it is said that the custodian of the Catania stadium had hidden bats and what not inside the stadium. He was also overheard yelling at the cops, “Bastards”!). And I really doubt that the British model of combating hooliganism will help much when many Italians don’t respect the simplest of laws (such as driving and talking on the cell phone or observing the speed limit on highways!).