Florence: crimes down by 21% in the last year
A comparison with statistics elaborated both by the Florence Police Headquarters and by the Specialties of the State Police as regards their sector of competence) between the situation before the pandemic in 2019 and that of last year: compared to 2019, in the Tuscan capital, there was a general drop of -21% has been verified to date.
Starting right from prevention measuresI Daspo Urbani, compared to 2019 in 2022 they increased by +45%; while there are as many as 80 prohibition measures to detect at sporting events (Daspo) signed by Quaestor Maurizio Auriemma and elaborated by Crime Police Division in 2022 against fans identified as a result of behavior deemed decidedly unsportsmanlike in Florence or Empoli.
Compared to 2019 there was an increase of +21% which also required an important investigative activity of the Digos Florentine, also engaged in parallel on other fronts of competence. Still in the context of prevention measures, in this patrimonial case, the Florence Anti-Crime Police Division, coordinated by the Central Anti-Crime Service of the State Police carried out, last July, the seizure of assets, corporate assets and financial resources attributable, also through third parties, to a man under investigation as part of an investigation by the Florentine Public Prosecutor’s Office for usury and other associative crimes. The provision, carried out in parallel also in the Salerno area, involved assets whose value is estimated at several hundred thousand euros.
The Warnings, in the last 4 years the figure has remained more or less unchanged, albeit down by more than half since 2019 (-61%).
Still on the subject of prevention, in 2022 extended i street checks on people and vehicles. Over the years, the use of increasingly sophisticated technology has undoubtedly speeded up and somewhat streamlined the procedures that allow the police operator to check the position of people subjected to mere routine checks directly on the street.
Control of the territory: in 2022 the police squads of the Florence Police Headquarters, those of the police stations of San Giovanni, Rifredi Peretola, Oltrarno, Sesto Fiorentino and Empoli, supported by the patrols of the Tuscany Crime Prevention Department more than doubled the checks on people compared to 2019. The increase compared to four years ago is very significant both in the city and in the hinterland: it goes from about 50,000 to almost 129,000 identified people. Triples the number of identity documents passed under the magnifying glass of the agents coordinated by Operations Room of the Florentine Police Headquarters: in 2019 there were 32,000, in 2022 over 100,000.
More checks correspond to an increase in work also for the Florence Scientific Police which compared to 2019 in 2022 increased photo-signals by + 25%. Again compared to four years ago instead of +19% le laboratory analysis of drugs: 1539 in 2019, 1938 in 2020, 1542 in 2021 and 1833 in 2022.
The trend of complaints from citizens for suspicious activities drug dealing on the other hand, it has marked a definite constant over the last four years, going from 808 reports recorded in 2019 to 424 in 2022
Thefts. From 2019 to 2022 they decrease on average by -30%: specifically by -41% the home burglariesby -46% i pickpocketingby -30% i thefts in commercial establishmentsby -10% those of carby -32% those of mopeds and -21% those of motorcycles.
One of the few data on the rise, in line with the national trend, concerns instead the robbery carried out on the street and which, on the basis of the data collected during the past year, would mainly concern mobile phones in Florence. The data tends to remain almost unchanged between 2019 and 2021, highlighting small fluctuations that never go beyond the average of one episode per day during the calendar year. In 2022, however, the phenomenon doubled, reaching around the average of a couple of robberies attempted or carried out every 24 hours.
But the increase of a criminal phenomenon does not mean “impunity”, underlines the Police Commissioner of the province of Florence: to deal with these numbers all the control services of the territory and the Florence Flying Squad met real ones tour de force. The Police Commissioner has in fact arranged a series of plainclothes services which have seen the use of the investigators of via Zara in targeted and specific stakeouts, above all in the evening and at night. The results were not long in coming and already last February the “Hawks” put an end to a series of robbery attacks carried out mostly against single women. On the other hand, over 25 people ended up in handcuffs, again by the Flying Squad, for attempted or committed burglaries throughout the province. Last month, the people who according to the agents are behind the numerous thefts in shops were finally arrested after breaking the windows with manhole covers taken from the street.