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By Root 642 0

would do better to talk to the horse! There is also the well-known joke about the red stripe down the sides of their uniform trousers, which is there so that the officers know which way up to wear them. A Monti resident provided this example: two carabinieri see an accordion one decides he wants to buy, but suggests that they should show up in civilian clothes because the shopkeeper would think they were trying to get a better price if they showed up in uniform-the joke at least respects their reputation for relative honesty. When they returned and asked about the accordion, the shopkeeper asked them if they were carabinieri. Surprised, they asked how he knew. Because, replied the shrewd fellow, this is a water heater!

2. I used the opportunity to ask the officer in charge about the local pattern of minor crime. Without any hesitation at all, he attributed it entirely to Gypsies and immigrants. Yet this remark, along with the license that the requirement of a denuncia gives the citizen to determine what categories of activity and of people should be reported, seems to produce precisely the effect that Palidda (2000, 205) describes as a "short-circuit" (corto- circuito) in the production of crime statistics-albeit, as he also acutely observes, filtered through local cultural predilections. Palidda's observations about the "postmodern" police provide an interesting amplification on a nationwide basis of much of what I describe here for the specific case of Rome.

3. One of them had previously lived in Greece and seemed more comfortable speaking Greek than Italian; this may have helped to establish a degree of confidence between us, although he did say that the Greek police had also been quite unpleasant to him.

4. See especially Caffiero 2004, 21-24.

5. On the demographic issue, see especially Krause 2006 and Schneider and Schneider 1996 and Halkias 2004 and Paxson 2004 for the comparable situation in Greece).

6. This was widely trumpeted in the press following the reporting of a UNESCO assessment in the eighteenth Eurispes report (r8oo Rapporto Italia 2006, Istituto di studi politici, economici e sociali, Rome).

7. I heard about one of these individuals from a friend of his. Later, when they quarreled, the friend told me that in fact the former officer had been forced out because he was caught stealing-but, he demanded, what was he supposed to tell me when they were still friends? Despite the impossibility of knowing which version was true, in either case we see corruption in the very institution that is supposed to combat it. The one former poliziotto in this group initially told me that it was not true he resigned in disgust but only because he wanted to get married; this is entirely plausible, but he may also, being of right-wing persuasion, have been more concerned to protect the honor of the forces from a foreigner he suspected-as I later discovered-of being a spy. And later he did say that after all he had resigned because he could not stand the corruption.

8. This Romanesco expression, which literally means "let's go," implies that everyone is satisfied with the existing arrangement and business as usual can go ahead.

9. Note, too, the expression ce magnano sobra they are eating on top of it; that is, with excessive greed). Such people are considered analogous to the pimp (pappone), another exploiter of human need.

io. For one version of the gifts given by client to patron, see Holmes 1989, 98.

11. The term is also used of the free extras-DVDs, special journal issues, and the like that come with many newspapers as a promotional device.

12. She had to resort to complaining to her captain friend again when another officer, discovering that a civil servant was living in the hotel, hinted that he expected a bribe of 5o,ooo lire, presumably to accept this as the official's permanent domicile.

13. The so-called legge Bersani (law no. I14WE998), in which the granting of food and other shop licenses was liberalized, was enacted precisely in order to undercut the prevalence of bribery by robbing it of its most vulnerable