Italian mayor bans gatherings of three or more people as soldiers hit streets

[Edric O]

Well, the title is pretty self-explanatory. Berlusconi's government in Italy decided to flood the streets with troops for no particular reason, while one especially creative mayor of the Northern League thought he would go one step further and ban all public gatherings of three people or more - apparently because a number of elderly residents complained about noise.

Link: Here's the article - from the Daily Torygraph no less!

The poor little mayor (Massimo Giordano) is being accused of fascism, but let's be fair - back in the 1920s, Mussolini only banned gatherings in excess of five people. Clearly Giordano thinks Mussolini was a wimp.

[Tatar Khan]

Could you elaborate more on the troop part. You see in Canada I just returned from long weekend vacation and the only thing CBC news is running constantly is the Beijing Olympics preparations.

Thanks.

[Edric O]

Well, the current right-wing government came to power earlier this year on an anti-immigration, tough-on-crime platform, and Berlusconi has been falling over himself to display just how extremely tough he is going to be on criminals (and immigrants - as far as he's concerned there is no difference between the two).

So he deployed 2500 troops on the streets of Italian cities for a minimum of 6 months and a maximum of one year, to fight crime. That's it, really. There was no event to trigger the troop deployment. The government just decided to do it. Here's a short BBC article on it:

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/europe/7455561.stm

[Tatar Khan]

Sounds like post WWII Odessa, Ukraine, when NKVD agents were deployed to the city to combat banditism and criminal activity that was getting out of hand for regular police service. I remember that the way they structured it was that the agents would pose as civilians that are easy targets for criminals and than when criminals would attack them either arrest the criminals or liquidated them on site. Plus all the major leaders of crime rings were to be liquidated on sight whether they were caught red handed or not.

[Sneakgab]

3 people? I wonder if there are exception, like parents with more than 1 child?

hmmm...

3000 soldiers (according to one of the articles) doesn't like a whole lot.  That should be about 1 soldier to about 20000 people (wiki).

Since such a small no probably wouldn't have a physical purpose, maybe their effect is meant through display? A show meant to discourage crime or something else?

[Anathema]

Italy is a crazy country compared to other western European countries, but is just insane.

As Sneakgab mentioned the deployment is very small compared to what they're covering wich leads me to suspect that it's mostly for show effect, demonstrating how much the government is bent on cracking down crime. Still insane, though.

[nemafakei]

Regarding the 'small deployment' - thing is, the army won't be distributed evenly across the town, it'll be focussed on the centre and the major thoroughfares. If the town structure is anything typical, the rich in the suburbs will be fine while the poor in the inner city will have their lives disrupted or threatened. Especially if they look working class or maybe a bit foreign.