Evicted From Eternity_ The Restructuring of Modern Rome - Michael Herzfeld [149]
In one sense the police intervention had protected the immigrants during the period of maximum tension, since the very fact of surveillance answered the call of less tolerant citizens for some sort of intervention without actually leading to significant numbers of arrests but also without permitting any escalation of anti-immigrant violence. The demonstrative hassling of a few immigrants by an uniformed officer, the occasional appearance of a plainclothes officer clearly following the immigrants' movements while sending out comments on a walkie-talkie, and then the cautious return of the immigrants to their positions in front of the church or to seats at the one bar that really welcomed them-this choreography of intimidation was not a scene of existential terror. Immigrants and police officers alike knew that they were playing out a mutually convenient drama.
Since it was the locals who called the police, they were forced to accept these compromises. They had filed complaints; the authorities had acted, which is all the law required them to do. The whole process turned out to be a perfect illustration of the practical logic of the denuncia to the extent to which it accommodated the various parties (including the police) and eventually quite literally exhausted their energy for further confrontation. Since the immigrants were usually on their best behavior as soon as the police appeared, and since the police would not ordinarily attempt to surprise them in some form of public disturbance without the prior submission of a denuncia, the mechanisms of citizen-state engagement worked to maintain the existing situation, until, with the arrival of a more proactive leadership in both churches, it could be managed in a more productive way.
That some police officers felt frustrated and helpless seems beyond question. In practice, however, their actions reproduced the usual pattern of compromise through performance: a display of authority, a technical act of cooperation with the complaining citizens, an occasional arrest where some specific and identifiable offense merited it. All the players, officers and immigrants alike, fully understand what to do; the officers put on a show of fierce surveillance, the immigrants of cowering timidity and respectful distance. Both sides demonstrated mastery of the timing and gestures appropriate to their complementary roles. In this sense the immigrants had in fact learned to play their own part in a distinctively (if not exclusively) Italian or at least Roman drama.
It is not only the national police who assert rather than impose their authority. A neighbor on our street pointed out that two one-way systems on that street started out from the same place but in opposite directions-a virtual invitation to drivers to break the law. Most of the time one never saw any policing of the spot. One day, however, a pair of city policemen unexpectedly appeared and proceeded to upbraid every motorist they managed to catch red-handed. But in fact they did not impose a single fine. As my neighbor suggested, "they needed to look as though they were in charge" but they also did not want to "look [socially] bad." Rather, one of the policemen-clearly, said my neighbor, an active neofascist-went on at great length about the current lack of discipline and, once again, blamed the miscreants' impunity on the stupidity of the deft-wing) government.
For many Romans, moreover, such negotiating space is not only humane; it also opens up possibilities for the play of humor and familiarity. Two workmen tried to climb up on Bernini's statue of Neptune in Piazza Navona; one of them succeeded in doing so, only to break the deity's scepter as he fell to the ground, and, when he was arrested, announced that he would sue the comune of Rome because it should not have been possible for him to gain access to such