Provincial Police dismantled in Verona; controversy is mounting in the two provinces for the assignment of competences to the municipal police forces already overburdened with tasks, “Who will deal with environmental crimes? Who will protect the fauna from poaching? ”.
The alarm for the dismemberment of the Corps starts from the Province, whose personnel will be diverted to the municipal police forces of the various municipalities, as foreseen by the Law Decree which entered into force on June 20. On Monday, the President of the Province Antonio Pastorello illustrated, in the Red Room of the Scaligero Palace, the practical consequences of the dismantling of the Provincial Police Force.
Present were: the commander of the Provincial Police, Anna Maggio; the president of the provincial section of the EPS-Game Producers Authority (wildlife companies), Giuseppe Ederle; the provincial councilor delegated to the policies of the wildlife and environment sector, Andrea Sardelli; the deputy commander of the Provincial Police, Damiano Cappellari. The representatives of the six territorial hunting areas and the Alpine districts also intervened: Alpine District - Ferrara-Monte Baldo, Turcato Tiziano; Standing Committee of Lessinia, Franco Vassanelli; ATC 2 dei Colli, Framarin Giorgio; ATC 6 Valli Grandi, Faccio Mirco; ATC 4 Adige, Massimo Moranduzzo. The 7.800 Veronese hunters, who carry out regular hunting activities through the Areas, will be the first to suffer the consequences of the abolition of the Provincial Police, which will no longer carry out surveillance and fight against poaching.
On 20 June, Legislative Decree 19.6.2015 n. 78 "Urgent provisions regarding Local Authorities", which in art. 5 suppresses the role but above all the functions of the Provincial Police Corps. A choice with which, with an urgent decree, the suppression not of the Provincial Police Corps, but of all its functions and professionalism, is sentenced. In the next few days, President Pastorello will send a letter to the Veronese parliamentarians so that the decree is modified during the conversion, favoring the maintenance of the specificity and professionalism of the Provincial Police operators. In fact, article 5 of the decree establishes that the personnel belonging to the Provincial Police Corps transits into the roles of the local authorities for the performance of the municipal police functions (it is forbidden for local authorities to recruit personnel for the performance of these functions until the complete absorption of Provincial Police). Therefore the Provincial Police is dismembered and assigned the staff in the various Municipalities with different tasks.
Who will supervise the protection of the territory and the environment? Who will protect the fauna from poachers? Who will supervise the provincial roads? For the specialization of its functions, the Provincial Police has always played a role of fundamental interest for the community, primary and in some cases unique referent for what concerns the environmental, ecological, fishing and hunting fields (Legislative Decree 112/98 in the field of soil, water and landscape protection both for the different territorial context). The Provincial Police has always been the only Police Force that carries out control and surveillance activities on hunting: when no one will perform these functions anymore, the poachers will have free rein to perpetrate their abuses, which will increase exponentially. There will be no more controls in the wildlife oases and protected areas, which will be subjected to continuous raids and in a short time the protected species will be at risk of extinction.
Today the Municipalities and the Municipal Police are overburdened by the innumerable assigned tasks, identifiable in the broader concept of urban security and, having always limited human resources, it is obvious that activities more strictly linked to the urban context and less specialized, such as the police, are favored. environmental. With the suppression of the Provincial Police and its functions, all citizens will remain without protection: it will no longer be possible to request an intervention for shooting near a house or a road, when poachers disrespectful for others damage orchards or crops, when at night and outside the period they fire, also endangering the safety of people.
Who will be responsible for monitoring the uncontrolled deposits of sewage that pollute the aquifers? Who will intervene in the event of the burial of hazardous waste? Of foul-smelling drains or illegal quarries? Who will supervise the respect of the protected areas and will carry out the seizure of illegal buildings? “Today we sound the alarm - says President Pastorello - for the great risk that our territory runs due to the dismantling of the Provincial Police. The work of this Corps has ensured us up to now a careful work of prevention of environmental crimes: poaching, spillage of polluting sewage in the aquifers, hazardous waste, illegal quarries. Law Decree 78 sweeps away these vigilances, which is why we will ask the Veronese parliamentarians to find a solution when converting the decree to protect the territory of our province. We also turn to the Region to take care of the emergency in an appropriate manner. This being the case, the increase in penalties wanted by the government to punish the eco-crimes also becomes useless, since there will no longer be anyone to supervise and ensure compliance with the law. We know that all our agents will be absorbed by the Municipal Police Corps of the various Municipalities, which, however, do not have the necessary resources to ensure the service that the Provincial Police is carrying out ”.
Councilor Sardelli adds: “It is also important to underline the great professionalism of the Provincial Police which, in recent years, in addition to carrying out control work, has also had a social task of protecting the environment. Without this important contribution we do not know what we will face. We would like to understand who will have to carry out the control work carried out so far by the Provincial Police, since, as already mentioned, the Municipal Corps do not have the strength ”.
“We are very demoralized - concludes commander Maggio - because with this decree law not only the Corps, but also the functions of the Provincial Police are dismantled. It almost seems that our work was considered a habit that the Province has decided to give itself without any real use. All our agents will be sorted individually in the various Municipalities and, in this way, it will be impossible to carry out the control work on a supra-municipal territory, as has been done in past years. For some time I was an agent of the Municipal Police and I know that the municipalities, overburdened by their tasks, cannot fail to concentrate their surveillance work on urban centers. It will therefore be impossible for these entities to maintain control of the peripheral areas of the territory or to follow very technical matters such as environmental protection. The community will therefore find itself totally orphaned of functions of protection of the territory and of surveillance of fishing and hunting ”.
(1 July 2015)
Source: VeronaSera