It’s written as a professional profile change, it’s read as a uniform change. The final act that definitively removes the former commander Daniele Lo Presti from the Taormina Local Police arrived yesterday. It was signed by the general secretary Giuseppe Bartorilla, with a determination aimed at assigning the official the professional profile of “specialist in administrative activities” within the Technical Area, where he was transferred on September 4 as part of the reorganization of the organizational structure of the Municipality, “for service reasons – as stated in the provision – related to three strategic sectors such as the One-Stop Shop for Productive Activities, Urban Planning and Public Works”.
Bartorilla recalls how art. 52 of Legislative Decree 165/2001 provides that the employee must be assigned to the tasks for which he was hired or to equivalent tasks within the classification area, but consolidated jurisprudence has introduced principles that have strengthened and expanded the unilateral power recognized to the Administration when it proceeds to change the tasks of the public employee, provided that the tasks of origin and those of destination are both attributable to the same contractual category.
A decision that Lo Presti would be willing to contest, like those previously taken by the mayor Cateno De Luca regarding his transfer to the Town Hall. Choices criticized by many, most recently by the Professional Association of Local Police of Italy, which sent a note to the mayor, regional councilor for Local Autonomies and Public Function, prefect, public prosecutor and president of Anci Sicilia, signed by the national president Silvana Paci and the regional president Giovanni Battista D’Amico. It defines the measures to suppress the Local Police Corps and transfer the commander as “extremely serious and an arbitrary act of power, as it was issued without dutifully and obligatorily going through the city council for the variation of the Statute”, recalling that the Corps are made up of at least 7 units and that of Taormina has a complement of 9 units including the commander.
“These parameters are legitimately and abundantly corresponding to a good composition of the Corps present for decades – the association highlights – and which carries out its role at the service of the Taormina community, a good reference for the Prefecture and for the Prosecutor’s Office”. Paci and D’Amico invite De Luca “to a fruitful rethink on the choice, because we believe that eliminating the only judicial police officer is of absolute gravity”.
In the meantime, Daniele Lo Presti concluded his experience at the Local Police of Nizza di Sicilia yesterday, with the expiration of the 12-hour weekly bypass that began in November 2023: “While waiting for the process for the renewal of my collaboration, scheduled to start on October 1st – he said – I express my most sincere thanks to all the members of the municipal administration and in particular to the mayor Natale Briguglio and his deputy Nunziata Foscolo, together with the councilors, councilors, colleagues and all the citizens. Their closeness, support and trust have been fundamental in these months, in which we have worked on the reorganization of the Office, digitalizing the sanctioning and administrative procedures and carrying out many other projects. It has been a privilege for me to serve this community and contribute, together with them, to the safety and well-being of the country”.