Army general Paolo Gerometta, former commander of the regiment Savoy Cavalry, with experience of missions in Kosovo and Lebanon, he was appointed by the mayor of Rome, Virginia Raggi, commander of the body of city policemen of the capital.
The question that arises is the following: what does a military man have to do with the urban police? The problem is certainly not the officer's qualities, but rather the chaotic and unreliable system inherent in the management of automobile traffic control activities in the capital of Italy. Those who live in Rome are well aware of the difficulties of having to move in the car and the poor control exercised by the police, not always because of them. For years now we have been used to seeing armed soldiers on the streets (operation Safe Roads, currently the most demanding of our Army), without a logical criterion on the use, only as a bogeyman against a possible terrorist attack, without a timing regarding the duration of the mission.
But it is one thing to use the soldiers for public order, another matter to think of applying military discipline to a civilian body such as that of urban policemen. A commander of a military unit expects the orders given to be carried out, while a city policeman from Rome who does not share a received order "could put himself" in sickness (just remember the New Year's Eve of few years ago, though the epilogue was reassuring).
In conclusion, it is necessary to equip public managers with real powers, not only decision-making, in order to be able to do their job better, without perhaps seeing their own disposition canceled by some court of the TAR.
Photo: Geroluke
