MERANO. Let’s leave sheriffs to western movies, here we are talking about citizens who keep their antennas straight and interact with the police without intervening directly. The mayor says it clearly and roundly, to avoid any possibility of misunderstanding.
One step away from the implementation of the “neighborhood watch” project, the administration is smoothing out the rough edges of an initiative that is walking on hot coals. Courageous, because Merano is the first municipality in South Tyrol to do it. And for this very reason at risk of burns. To avoid getting burned it must be approached with all the necessary precautions.
City center.
The project will start, by Christmas, in the Merano center area. Open heart surgery. “The countdown has begun for the start of the operational phase of neighborhood control, a project that the municipal administration intends to implement to encourage the culture of participatory security” they say from via Portici, carefully measuring their words. After the signing of the Memorandum of Understanding between the Municipality and the Government Commissioner’s Office On February 7th, the subsequent study trip of the Merano administrators to Verona – where neighborhood watch is already a consolidated reality – and the public information evening at the end of May in the civic hall in May, the city council hall hosted an update meeting to define the next steps that will lead to the concrete launch of the initiative.
The meeting was attended by the mayor Dario Dal Medico, the councilor Nerio Zaccaria, the councilor Emanuela Albieri and the commander of the local police Alessandro De Paoli, representatives of the police force, neighborhood committees and citizens who support the project.
“After the public information evening in May, we collected applications from people interested in participating in the project and then we contacted the Provincial Committee for Public Order and Security, which is set up at the Government Commissioner’s Office in Bolzano and is chaired by the prefect,” Dal Medico explains. “The Committee verified the suitability of the candidates and expressed an assessment of the matter. Those deemed suitable will take part in a specific training event.”
Coordinator.
A person has been identified who will act as coordinator of the neighborhood watch in the pilot area of Merano center, where the initiative will be tested. As soon as the appropriate signage has been set up in the district, presumably before Christmas, the neighborhood watch will enter the operational phase. “In Italy, there are already six hundred municipalities that have implemented neighborhood watch and I am confident that here too the initiative will bear good fruit, because it is a project that works where there is collaboration, and Merano knows how to network. This is demonstrated by the recent cooperation between traders, which has allowed the police to identify the perpetrator of thefts in several shops in our city and to recover the stolen goods” highlights councilor Nerio Zaccaria. It is he, with Alleanza per Merano, who has been carrying out the project for years. Now it’s time to get down to business.
2024-09-24 00:30:02