Civic School's proposals for a safe city

Arezzo, May 25, 2025 – The Civic School’s proposals for a safe city

T enti: “Arezzo needs inclusion projects for the marginalized, and the strict application of existing laws to punish and chase away criminals

“But is Arezzo a safe city?” The question has been on social media, posters, and the media for weeks, on the initiative of the Tra Tevere e Arno association, which has been involved in civic education lessons in Arezzo schools for years.

An ongoing discussion with students aged 16 to 18 that highlighted the dissatisfaction of the kids (and their families) for a city that over the years has seen an increase in the sense of insecurity. Real and perceived. A wealth of information, reports and proposals, to be summarized in an event and in the dissemination of the results during a conference held this morning in the Sala dei Grandi of the Province.

The president of the association Stefano Tenti summarized in three chapters the proposals to launch to the institutions, from the state ones to the municipal one.

First short-term objective: creation of the Table for inclusion of which the Municipality is the promoter and in which employers and unions, the Police Forces and the Associations that deal with the excluded participate. "With the aim - said Tenti - of introducing them to training and work, because with today's rules it is already possible. Companies need hands, the excluded can put them there to recover their dignity as people". The local police, which has almost reached a hundred officers, must also be present at night, as well as the State Police and the Carabinieri. Greater presence of the Local Police on the road, perhaps even on foot. Presence at pre-established times in the hamlets. Greater listening to citizens. Degradation favors insecurity: lighting must be brought to the most critical areas, waste collection must be improved, video surveillance must be coordinated. And again: “update the Urban Police regulation to indicate the areas where the Dacur, i.e. the urban “Daspo”, should be applied. Facilitate reporting to the Police Headquarters of situations for which measures to close public establishments should be applied. “Always in the short term – insisted Tenti – promote by the Municipality, actions to identify concrete social services capable of re-educating those who have been sentenced to this penalty by the judge. Do everything within the Municipality’s possibilities so that those who can, punish the criminals with a firm hand.”

Then medium-term objectives such as making the Local Police station in Piazza Guido Monaco truly operational and establishing it in the Campo di Marte kiosk, also open to other police forces, especially at night. Studying effective procedures for the recovery and safety of abandoned buildings and census of homeless people who use them.

“It’s not all done in one day,” Tenti finally recalls, “but over the course of a few years, we’ll build the new Local Police Barracks in Via Tagliamento, in the Municipality’s maintenance area, given the practical impossibility of proceeding with the headquarters in Via Fabio Filzi.” Finally, we’ll build libraries and other places where young people can safely hang out and stay.

The morning opened with institutional greetings from Vincenzo Ceccarelli for the Region and from Simon Pietro Palazzo for the Provincial administration.

Lorenzo Pierazzi, the superintendent of education, was asked if respect for the rules is taught in schools. “I can tell you,” he said, “that the answer is yes. But it is not enough to do it in schools. The rules must be indicated and enforced outside of school, in families, and in society. And in every area, we need leaders who are the first to respect the rules and transform them into personal heritage for students.”

For the commander of the local police Aldo Poponcini, Arezzo has made great strides on this issue. He recalled that there are 500 active cameras, including those of many companies that have put them online, and that allow the headquarters of the police, the CC and the GdF to monitor the situation. “But this is not enough – Poponcini underlined – because there is significant room for improvement”.

People often ask themselves if “are the current laws sufficient to guarantee safety? And why are even willing individuals immediately released?” Roberto Rossi, who for a long time was the head of the Arezzo Prosecutor’s Office and is currently the Attorney General of the Ancona Court of Appeal, responded. “For years we have seen increasingly severe laws being promulgated and new types of crimes being established,” he explained, “but under Italian law the sentence imposed is only served with the final sentence. Even if you are arrested in the act, you do not stay in prison. At most, there is the obligation to sign in a couple of times a week, which is anachronistic and totally useless. The real criminal is not afraid of the final sentence sentence, because it often becomes reparative with assignment to social services.”

Crime is sometimes cultivated (as if it were a greenhouse) even in prisons. “Laws should distinguish - said Giuseppe Fanfani, Tuscan guarantor of prisoners - between criminals and marginalized people. We need to be tough with those who have blood on their hands and with the white-collar workers that the underworld uses. Instead, we must help others to re-enter society, even with large investments.” Fanfani illustrated the data on the Tuscan prison population: there are 3,200 prisoners, 40% foreigners, 37% drug addicts, 35% with a large psychiatric component, and in 2024 alone there were 8 suicides and many others prevented.

Connected from Ercolano, the mayor Ciro Boajiuto, explained how the adherence to legality, first of the shopkeepers tired of the extortionist Camorra, then with the support of good politics, has healed the city with 500 arrests and 44 life sentences out of 60,000 inhabitants, accompanied by urban and social choices to help the populations.

The director of the civic school, Maria Pia Nannini, in front of the students of the fourth C of the F. Redi scientific school who were in the room, read one of the 250 messages collected in two weeks among the people of Arezzo in view of the conference. A text that was able to explain in a few lines what the feelings of suffering of citizens are in the face of degradation and insecurity, written by a young entrepreneur and mother: "I deeply love my city, but in recent years I have seen it change, I hope not irremediably, for the worse. I have always lived in Saione. I have recently decided to open my business there, but believe me, sometimes I think I have performed a real act of courage for several reasons: thefts and muggings are the order of the day, mostly by drug addicts with the aim of getting the money they need to get drugs. Walking down the street you can easily see illicit exchanges of doses as if nothing was happening. In every corner there are people urinating and defecating in the open, without any restraint. I would like to report the presence on the street of individuals already known to the police who from morning to night drink alcohol incessantly and often go on rampages beating up innocent passers-by. So to the question "Is Arezzo a safe city?" I must, reluctantly, answer no. At least I don't feel safe. As an entrepreneur and citizen I feel oppressed by taxes and regulations that I perceive should be respected only by those who have the possibility of paying them, that is, by those who do everything to live legally and with a civic sense. Criminals, on the other hand, travel undisturbed and camp out peacefully without fear and without rules. I would like things to change radically, that the police had the possibility of truly enforcing the rules on everyone, and that criminals were punished equally. There should be suitable structures for the mentally ill to be able to guarantee their safety and that of others. I don't know if this message of mine will have resonance but the hope of returning to experience the Arezzo of the past is the last to die. Thank you”.

Stinging, direct and without mediation, the words of Antonella Giorgeschi, of the Piazza della Badia committee: "We citizens who denounce the unworthy spectacle of the movida evenings, should be considered intolerant, exaggerated, disturbers of workers. But if no one does anything to change the unseemly spectacle of the weekends (and in the summer of every day) we will not give up and we will continue to see our rights as citizens guaranteed. Music until 3-4 in the morning, drunken kids who become uncontrollable, wild parking, and when you call who should intervene at most a patrol arrives with only two officers who often get insults, spit on, pushed or bottles thrown at their heads. The next morning it's up to us to clean up, pick up broken glass, put back in their place the pedestrian barriers that are dismantled one by one".

Fabrizio Ghironi, who has been working in the center of Saione for a quarter of a century, thanked the Tra Tevere e Arno association for proposing and creating a different way of addressing the issue of security, listening first to citizens and proposing credible solutions. Then, without hiding the serious problems that exist in the neighborhood, saying he agreed with the young entrepreneur whose message was read, he said that politics must be able to develop the wealth that Saione: in the most populous and most “foreign” neighborhood of Arezzo, a strong inclusion has developed between those who come from distant countries and historic inhabitants of the neighborhood.