Evicted From Eternity_ The Restructuring of Modern Rome - Michael Herzfeld [144]
Speaking of this incident subsequently, a cynical friend offered a very different explanation, claiming that police always waited a while, to give the thieves a chance to make a getaway; then "they meet up and some money changes hands." I have no reason to suppose that this was true of our situation, or even that it was a common occurrence, but it reveals a widespread view of the forces of law and order. Even a shopkeeper who was sympathetic to the authorities' difficulties said that often the carabinieri arrived with their sirens blaring so as to warn the thieves to get away quickly. That, he said, was vastly preferable to making an arrest only to have it overturned on a legal nicety-a common police complaint.
I cannot judge whether there was any justice to the suspicion that the carabinieri acted with deliberate slowness; nor do I know whether the plausible argument that authorities had more urgent cases on hand was the real reason for their slow response. I did now receive a further lesson in how the bureaucratic procedures of the police forces effectively encouraged criminal activity by throwing the weight of responsibility for further action on the citizen long after the moment for immediate action had passed.
To my astonishment, the young corporal proceeded to inform me that his report was simply a matter of archival procedure, and that I would have to go independently to the station to lodge my denuncia about the break-in. I expostulated, not understanding the fine distinction he was making between his report and my complaint; I thought he had already written the case up. Unmoved by my perplexity, he stolidly explained that it was my duty as a citizen to report the matter. To my responding that I was not a citizen of the Italian state, he simply said that this was irrelevant, since the law required me to do this in any case-although he was prepared to leave the decision up to me (a revealing ambiguity in itself! ). His parting shot was to remark that this street was not a primary focus of police interest, which is why there were no regular patrols-a point about which residents in fact sometimes complained. The street was not important in his eyes, or, apparently, in those of his superiors; the case was crushingly insignificant; and that was that.
I mulled over his stern order over for a day or two, unsure that it was really worth the trouble (and so no doubt putting even more distance between the presumed criminals and the authorities) but decided in the end that the procedure might offer an interesting ethnographic experience. (There had been a break-in in a hardware store near our house; the proprietor had decided it would not be worth his while to make a denuncia but thought that I, as a foreigner, might find it interesting!) And so I went looking for the appropriate office.
What followed seemed to confirm the comic image that many Italians still hold of the carabinieri, the army-based police corps. (Entire books are devoted to carabinieri jokes; these volumes are available at newsstands throughout the city, and mostly emphasize the legendary stupidity of the force.' Not knowing exactly where their station was, I asked a couple of resplendently uniformed officers I encountered on the street, who solemnly assured me that they did not know as they were from the Piazza Venezia station [about ten minutes' walk away). We were in fact virtually opposite the station, which was merely on the other side of the road. But, as a young woman friend remarked when I expressed astonishment that they could not answer, "For heaven's sake-[that's] too much work!"
The officer who functioned downstairs as a receptionist was dubious about the need for a denuncia, given that nothing had been stolen. This was by no means a unique reaction; a Monti shopkeeper told me that when she reported an unsuccessful break-in, a senior officer commented, "What's she gone to do that