"The police should be independent of the government, just like the judiciary." Interview with Nicola Rossiello

A closed world, subject to the ideological leanings of the government. This is how Nicola Rossiello, secretary of the Silp Cgil Piemonte police union, describes the police force today. And 25 years on from the G8 summit in Genoa, faced with the prospect of further tragedies, he expresses his "deepest concern"

Elena CiccarelloDirettrice responsabile lavialibera

1 aprile 2026

• Condividi

From the protests in Turin to the Rogoredo case, right through to the impact of new technologies on security. We meet Nicola Rossiello, general secretary of the Silp Cgil Piemonte police union, whilst the Senate’s Institutional Affairs Committee debates the conversion into law of the Meloni government’s latest security decree. We meet him to discuss, with a representative of the police force, the resurgence of repression and the management of public order. Of social conflict transformed into a security issue, dismissed as a disruptive element in the face of consumption and the Instagrammable hedonism of cities cleaned up for tourists. Of the hypocrisy of the ‘bad apple’ theory, dusted off in the recent case of Abderrahim Mansouri, killed in Milan by police officer Carmelo Cinturrino, for which seven other officers are currently under investigation. "The police forces in our country are completely impervious," says Rossiello. "There is no way of observing how they behave or operate, and there is no oversight body monitoring what happens, apart from the judiciary when the case reaches a judge."

The historical revisionism of Giorgia Meloni

Rossiello, could you explain that further?

The police force is a body isolated from the rest of civil society, and this fosters a sort of self-governance and internal justice, which also means self-monitoring, but prevents democratic accountability. It is an issue that should be addressed in all its complexity, which also includes the question of identification codes for officers – codes that, not coincidentally, have never been introduced in Italy.

So?

If we are talking about the autonomy and independence of the judiciary, we should also be talking about the autonomy and independence of the police force. We need to initiate a process that brings them closer to the rest of the population, making them a truly democratic organisation that safeguards all citizens. Today, however, it is a closed world, subject to the ideological leanings of the government in power. And the priorities of the current executive are clear, set out in black and white in the latest security decrees. We are experiencing a chilling squeeze on democracy. While the Constitution says one thing, the security decrees say and implement another. What is more, these measures seem to have been devised without a full understanding of how the state actually functions. Measures are being introduced, such as preventive detention in the event of demonstrations, which are virtually impossible to enforce when there will be a shortfall of at least 40,000 police officers in the coming years.

The latest security decree also sets out new rules for recruitment and career progression within the police forces. What are the changes?

It appears that 16,000 new recruits are to be taken on across the State Police, Carabinieri and Finance Police, but the reality is that these figures barely cover the gaps left by retirements, without truly resolving the chronic staffing shortage afflicting police headquarters and barracks. The push for competitive examinations for 4,000 senior inspectors between 2026 and 2027 seems more like a ploy to deplete operational roles and overload managerial ones, with the paradox that we will have many coordinators and fewer and fewer actual patrols on the ground. Even the simplification of tests for those already in service, whilst appearing to be a favour, risks lowering standards in the name of bureaucratic haste that fails to take account of the complexity of current challenges.

And what are the current challenges?

To look at the most recent example, the gathering in Turin on 31 January, for the demonstration in support of self-management, against the Meloni government’s policies, against war and in defence of social spaces, reflected a social unease that cannot be delegated solely to the police. For some time now, we have been witnessing a management of public order that is affected by the silence of politics: when governments reduce their role to the mere administration of the status quo, protests become a sort of technical obstacle to the administrative continuity of the moment, rather than a critical contribution to the country’s growth. And if politics remains silent, the police officer becomes the state’s lightning rod.

In Italy politicians want to punish environmentalists with disproportionate sentences

Has the way public gatherings are managed also changed?

Since 2023, a more repressive approach has taken hold, aimed above all at stifling the political agency of the younger generations. And this is also evident in the practical strategies adopted. Let me give an example: in Turin, police have always flanked demonstrations, but for some time now there has been a tendency to deploy rapid-response units instead; that is, law enforcement is positioned in the streets adjacent to the demonstration with orders to intervene only when a critical situation arises. There are at least two consequences of this strategy: it prevents and undermines the relationship between demonstrators and the police, and it limits intervention to emergency situations and therefore to the only method used in such cases, which is the use of physical force. We need to understand why this approach has been chosen over others.

You tell us.

The shift from flanking to rapid-response units in Turin is not a mere technical detail, but a reflection of a broader and heated political and cultural debate on how to manage dissent and on the role of law enforcement in a democracy. On the one hand, there are those who justify it as a necessary response to premeditated violence; on the other, those who interpret it as a deliberate political choice to limit the freedom of action and visibility of the younger generations taking part in protests. The change in strategy is justified by the need to manage a context considered more violent and polarised. Critics, such as myself, see in this a desire to shift from an approach of mediation to one of pure repression, where an encounter with the police is merely a moment of confrontation. Any possibility of dialogue and negotiation during the march is lost. The police are no longer a dialogue partner, but an ‘army’ lying in wait in the shadows.

Any other signs of this shift towards repression?

One of the most critical developments of recent times is the authorisation for police forces to enter schools and universities. Then there is the abuse of preventive measures against those demonstrating peacefully, such as expulsion orders and verbal warnings. I would also add the criminalisation of passive resistance and the use of force in certain contexts of public demonstrations that have always been handled differently and appropriately in the past. Sometimes, as happened in Pisa on 22 February 2024, it is unclear what event triggers the use of law enforcement, given that there are precise recommendations on the need to tailor its use to security requirements. There has been a shift in approach: I have been working in public order since 1997 and can assure you that in these thirty years there has never been a need to prosecute breaches of Article 18 of the Consolidated Law on Public Security (TULPS), namely those requiring organisers of public gatherings to notify the police commissioner at least three days in advance.

To be clear, these are the provisions now addressed by the new security decree, which formally decriminalises them but increases the fine from less than €500 to €10,000 for failure to give prior notice and introduces a penalty of up to €10,000 for those who deviate from the agreed route.

Exactly, but here in Turin, we have essentially never needed to enforce them. There have always been technicalities, route deviations and other similar measures. Because the main focus was on guaranteeing the right to demonstrate, as enshrined in the Constitution.

What do you make of the now widespread practice of drones flying over marches and cameras constantly trained on anyone taking part in public demonstrations?

We are on the cusp of a sort of genetic mutation in security, because digital systems no longer wish merely to observe, but to predict, with the aim of eliminating both the unexpected and doubt. It is an extremely critical transition that deserves the utmost attention and commitment to balancing the human element with that of algorithms. The ethical breaking point of all this lies in the code’s blindness to the emotional temperature of a situation: artificial intelligence ignores feelings such as compassion or that extraordinary gift that is common sense. Total surveillance transforms the public square into a sort of glass case that tends to dissect the identity of every single person in an attempt to predict critical situations. But this form of ubiquitous surveillance generates forms of self-censorship that we can already see when, in chat rooms, we are led to no longer use plain language, but instead mask our words for fear of digital surveillance. The psychological stranglehold of the algorithm conditions us even before any form of physical repression intervenes.

With its new law, the government of Giorgia Meloni will create a new army of irregular migrants, associations say

Twenty-five years on from Genoa, in this climate, must we fear a repeat of the events that stained the G8 with blood?

If we look at the current political management of public order, I must express my deepest concern. Today there are structural shortcomings and very high levels of stress, with officers working for up to twenty consecutive hours. For police officers, Genoa 2001 marked the breaking point of a reform process that was never resumed. Before that, the watchword was ‘in a democratic state, the police are at the service of the citizen’; now it is ‘always being there’: a radical paradigm shift, moving in the direction of a silent remilitarisation. It was in the years following Genoa that, for 12 years, police officers were recruited from the army. This has also resulted in the de-feminisation of the police force, with the percentage of female officers having fallen dramatically.

Is the Italian police force racist, as the European Commission against Racism and Intolerance has written?

I wouldn’t say so. The police respond to the policies of the government in power. So I wouldn’t speak of racism in the strict sense, but rather of a sort of cultural orientation that should instead be monitored or subject to safeguards. And that is why I insist on the independence and autonomy of the police force.

Ultimately, what should we hope for in the immediate future?

We need to rethink the selection, training and organisation of the police force, but also, perhaps first and foremost, the country’s security model, which cannot be a repressive one. Following the right on the issue of security was a colossal mistake. We should focus on social security, as the philosopher and educationalist Guido Tallone argues: we must think of a single, new word, ‘social security’ – bearing in mind that it is this which ultimately really weighs on a country, whilst the safety of individuals is a duty, but in percentage terms weighs far less. In the social sphere, the forms of security that directly affect the quality and stability of people’s lives are manifold and overshadowed by public security. I am referring to economic security, health security, housing security, food and environmental security, educational security and relational security. We should also remember that conflict is not a threat to be eliminated, but a reality to be addressed politically. I have said this before: every time the truncheon replaces words or the negotiating table, a piece of the constitutional pact is torn apart.

This article was translated by Kompreno with the support of DeepL

• Condividi