The complaint of the two passers-by, a boy and a girl, filed with the public prosecutor's office in Florence, who filmed the arrest phases for the identification of a
street vendor, immobilized on the ground on Lungarno Acciaiuoli, in a video, then broadcast online.
near Ponte Vecchio, by traffic police in civilian clothes
engaged in anti-degradation control.
"The complaint - the lawyer Cosimo Magazzini said yesterday - was presented this morning and was done
so that the work of the police is evaluated
", in this case that of civilian police officers of the municipal police of Florence.
In the document, the lawyer specifies,
no specific crimes against the agents are hypothesized,
however "we postponed the assessment to the prosecutor - he explains - because we saw the scene but we do not know the background. What we ask is to clarify".
The lawyer also announced that he intends to make contact in the next few days with the Senegalese consulate in Florence.
The association 'Mutuelle of the solidarity of Senegalese in Italy' issued a statement in which it defines the incident as
"the epilogue of a series of acts of discrimination",
and underlines "the racist, inhuman and degrading nature of the treatment".
The episode dates back to April 5, then in the following days the video was
released on the web.
"The arrest was initially carried out for identification purposes. Then the abusive street vendor was reported for
resistance to a public official
and personal injury in addition to the non-presentation of documents. a more complex intervention. On the modalities we took action to verify the procedures for the immobilization of people for safety and without the use of violence ".
The city councilor for urban security Benedetta Albanese
said this to the city council,
adding that "this morning there was a meeting in the prefecture with the mayor, the commander of the municipal police, the prefect, the ambassador and the consul of Senegal ".
Albanese said that
the intervening agents had "injuries, healed in three and five days respectively.
The psycho-physical condition of the seller was good, he did not ask for treatment and we had no news that there had been access to the emergency room. our intention is to shed light on the methods adopted, proceed with internal checks that may be deemed appropriate and necessary. Commercial illegal is a topic that is faced by the municipal police body: in 2019 102,000 pieces were seized , at the beginning of 2022 we are already at 8,000 pieces ".