Messina, the municipal police away from the streets: last Saturday 161 officers were… at home

John

By John

That phrase, “I saw few policemen on the road”, pronounced during his first official appearance in the city council chamber (it was a session of the road commission), risks continuing to be a sort of visiting card for the new commander of the municipal police, Maurizio Cannavò.

Historically, the Saturday before Christmas is one of the most delicate days in terms of traffic. Well the first fact that catches the eye is that on that day the unavailable, among those absent for the most varied reasons (holidays, 104, leaves, leaves, illnesses, accidents) and officers on rest, there were 161. Compared to 113 officers on duty spread across multiple shifts. And going into specifics, on the Saturday morning shift (we reiterate, December 23rd, the last Saturday before Christmas Eve) the officers on the street, between road services, territorial operational section and motorcyclist section, were just 9 out of 56. And the others? Between Tso, accidents, speed cameras, construction, waste, decorum, housing section, general affairs, guardhouses, various offices.
It didn’t go any better on Saturday afternoon: 7 out of 7 pm on traffic. The need to divert many officers to the evening shift, the one that goes from 7 pm to 1 am, to dedicate 12 of them to managing traffic conditions for the concert in Gabry Ponte. But if we look at the organization of shifts on another weekday, without concerts – Monday 18 December, for example -, the overall figure does not change much: in the morning shift 14 out of 111 agents were dedicated to traffic, in the afternoon 12 out of 54, in the evening 4 out of 12, in the night 4 out of 10, those unavailable that day were 86.