Important investigations which have made it possible to defeat new ‘Ndrangheta gangs, but also combat the increasingly rampant phenomenon of gender violence and scams against the elderly. These are the salient data of the activity conducted by the Carabinieri of the province of Crotone in the past year, the results of which were illustrated today to the provincial command of the Carabinieri by Colonel Raffaele Giovinazzo. An activity carried out through 14 thousand services in the area during which 40 thousand vehicles and 60 thousand people were checked.
The investigations carried out by the units and operational sections of the operational and mobile radio units of the three Companies of Crotone, Cirò Marina and Petilia Policastro, coordinated by the investigative unit of the Operational Department, under the direction of the Public Prosecutor’s Office of Crotone and the Anti-Mafia District Directorate of Catanzaro , resulted in the ooperations called Sahel, against the nascent Martino di Cutro gang, and Nemesis, which brought to light the activities of the Tallarico di Casabona gang. Equally important are the operations against drug dealers operating in the historic center of Crotone. In this regard, Colonel Giovinazzo underlined the relationship that has been established with entrepreneurs and traders, who have «become aware of the fact that the only path, the only practicable path to guarantee their activity in the corporate field, is that to denounce the extortionate pressures that are usually exerted”.
The provincial commander of the force then referred to the murder of pizza chef Francesco Chimirri, killed on 7 October last year in the popular Lampanaro neighborhood with a gunshot fired by the deputy inspector of the State Police Giuseppe Sortino. «It’s a very sad page – commented Giovinazzo – on which the investigations have already made it possible to ascertain a series of responsibilities. The work is not yet completed, we will soon have to complete the reporting activity, but it is certainly an episode that was not needed due to the sad epilogue it had and in which the force was involved. I believe that, as he usually does, he gave an effective response very quickly. We also called in the specialized departments of the weapon such as the RIS of Messina, precisely to give the investigative activity an exquisitely high-level cut, because the terrible and dramatic event required it”.
126 people were reported and arrested for crimes related to gender violence, compared to 86 in 2023, with the victims subjected to protection measures. The preventive and repressive activities on scams targeting the elderly in 2024 increased to 13 compared to 9 in 2023. The Carabinieri of the provincial command were also engaged in combating environmental, workplace and cultural heritage protection offences. Within the anti-mafia joint forces group, called to examine requests for registration in the databases of companies in the province to operate with the public administration, a qualified contribution was guaranteed, through the sharing of important information data, useful for preventing the possible interference by organized crime in the companies examined and, at the same time, to avoid any dispersion of public money.