Palermo council clashes over police tests with gun

Last Updated: September 7, 2024

Palermo, test sui vigili con la pistola: è scontro in consiglio comunale

The clash is tough, harsh, at times poisonous. What seemed to be a formality has become a sort of battle played for high stakes. Do municipal police officers who carry weapons for service reasons have to undergo a psycho-attitudinal visit once a year? The current municipal regulation still in force provided for it.

But the majority intends to remove that provision from the new regulation under discussion in the Council, while the opposition cries scandal and is in favor of maintaining the obligation of the visit. The commander, Angelo Colucciello, and the most representative union within the Corps, are on the center-right position.

Colucciello’s opinion – lengthy and articulated, which councilor Ugo Forello defined as “a little lesson in law” – at the end of the reasoning sets the concept that for municipal police officers “there is no requirement for psychophysical fitness, neither preventive nor periodic.” Maintaining, for example, that since the officers are equipped “with arms without a license, the law 87 of ’89 which establishes controls for the possessors of arms for personal defense is not applicable.” Moreover, the general accountant based on this explanation expressed a negative accounting opinion on the proposal as the visits have a cost and the Municipality cannot afford them.

But all this explanation is not enough for the center-left, according to whom in the absence of a state discipline, a Municipality can regulate the matter with a regulation. “But on this – attacks Forello – the commander did not answer. He does not tell us essentially whether the Council has the authority to provide for these controls.”

Meanwhile, however, it is discovered that the 2018 regulation that expressly established annual visits was never applied. No officer, in short, has ever seen a doctor. “So – Forello concludes – why was a regulatory obligation not respected?”

Also Carmelo Miceli, a member of the minority in favor of the checks, is on the same wavelength: “The ministerial circular of 2018, signed by Salvini, which states ‘they are not obligated’ is a forced interpretation. But when we talk about Palermo and what happens there, I say that a check on those who hold weapons is necessary.” And he recalls – in support of his thesis – the murder-suicide of a husband and wife with her gun, a municipal guard.

But the reference to that event is clearly disapproved by the Municipal Police Councilor, Dario Falzone. And even Nicola Scaglione, a municipal guard and manager of the Csa-Cisal, says that “it is unbearable to refer to that case, because it has nothing to do with it. People kill with kitchen knives, bare hands, jumping from balconies. So what? Should we remove utensils from all kitchens? Wrong reasoning. An arm, if anything, gives you responsibility.” But then it’s chaos. Councilor Giuseppe Milazzo polemizes with Miceli, then the room heats up and the president closes the session.