Murder Committed In Police Headquarters

Press, Volume XCVI, Issue 28440, 21 November 1957, Page 6

Murder Committed In Police Headquarters

(From a Reuter Correspondent)

ROME. Murder at police headquarters here has set Italian police a major problem—whether to fight a new law safeguarding the citizens, or to leave themselves open to possible violence by criminals. The law forbids the police to search anyone taken to headquarters for questioning without permission from the chief of the department. This means that, as happened recently, a criminal can carry a revolver—and use it—without the police being able to protect themselves. The law was one of a series approved by Parliament in the last five years following complaints that police were overtough and sometimes “unconstitutional” in their dealings with people. The old Fascist laws gave the police practically unlimited power. They could, for instance (and did) subject a man or woman to a careful search if they happened to be in the vicinity of a riot, or at their homes if a theft occurred next door, or at police headquarters if they were accidentally near the scene of one of the weekly police anti-vice raids.

Up to about five years ago, there were frequent allegations in court that police used “third degree” methods to “persuade” a suspected person to confess to a crime. And there was one sensational case in which a defendant, alleged by the police to have made a full confession of a sex murder, was found not guilty by the court. During the not infrequent riots, the police shock squads sent scores of Innocent bystanders to hospital with their speeding jeeps and short, wooden truncheons. But in the last few years, police methods have become notably milder. During the periodical anti-vice sweeps, checks are made to ensure innocent people are not taken to prison for several nights, as happened in the past. And in riots, the police, with a few recent exceptions, are not as indiscriminate fos in the past in their use of truncheons and sub-machine-guns.

All Italian police are still armed with a revolver. The “riot squads” also have truncheons, sub-machine-guns, rifles and often hand-grenades fastened to their belts. They have to be armed for in Italy even juvenile delinquents are known nearly always to carry revolvers or sub-machine-guns. This habit, according to the police, is largely responsible for Italy’s annual murder rate of just over 1500. “An armed criminal,” said a police official recently, “will invariably kill to save his skin.” The new law against searching suspected persons is now being blamed by the police for an unprecedented murder in the heart of the massive grey building which houses Rome’s police headquarters. A 35-year-old unemployed Italian was picked up by the police on the suspicion that he planned to hold up a former professional’football player. The man was driven to police headquarters and taken up to the fourth floor office of Rome’s traffic and tourist police division. For 45 minutes, the mild-look-ing but powerful man sat in an ante-room waiting to be called into the office of the assistant chief of the department, Dr. Antonino Troisi. Dr. Troisi asked him for the usual details —name, age, address. The man’s answer was to draw an Italian automatic pistol from an inside pocket of his well-cut sports jacket and fire all eight bullets at the police in the room.

A bullet, entered the heart of a 35-year-old sergeant, who died a few minutes later. Dr. Troisi himself was hit three times and may lose the use of his right arm. A constable was wounded in the thigh. Another policeman, was hit twice and has since been taken to a mental hospital for special treatment.

Policemen who burst into the room overpowered the man. After treatment of various face Injuries he was taken to prison to await trial on charges of murder and attempted murder. A high police officer told reporters bitterly during the sergeant’s funeral: “In the old days, we would have searched the man and not left him for 45 minutes with a fully loaded revolver in his pocket. The new law has made our primary task of crime prevention a joke. “Hardened criminals sneer at us when we find them acting suspiciously and tell us: ’Hands off or I’ll drag you to court.’ And they go their way, probably with a revolver in their pocket, ready for crime.

“The series of laws passed in the last few years allow us, in effect, to intervene only when a crime has been committed —when, for instance, it is too late to save a person from being murdered.” But newspapers are urging Italian legislators to stand firm for the new laws. Rome’s influential, pro-government, newspaper, “Il Messaggero,” said, in a frontpage leading article: “The police demonstrated a most praiseworthy sense of regard for a citizen’s rights. A policeman has sacrificed his life. Three others have suffered injury. “But the new law should not be changed. The tragedy, we hope will give citizens a new sense of admiration for the police, and a new urge to co-operate with them, instead of the old fear and suspicion of anyone in police uniform."