Victims slapped, insulted, blinded with pepper spray, thrown to the ground and used "as rags to clean the floor" . Forced to urinate on the floor and clean up. And again, one hit with a slap in the face so hard that he was knocked unconscious for a few minutes.

These are just some of the episodes of torture and beatings reconstructed by the agents of the Verona flying squad who, after eight months of investigations with the aid of tape recorders and video cameras, arrested five colleagues . An inspector and four officers ended up under house arrest, accused on at least seven occasions of abusing people in their custody.

In the order of the investigating judge Livia Magri which orders the precautionary measures, it is underlined how the suspects with their conduct "have betrayed their function, compressing the rights and freedoms of subjects subject to their authority, offending their very dignity as persons, creating disorder and jeopardizing public safety." Policemen who allegedly «committed crimes rather than preventing them and took advantage of the position held, even making ideological falsehoods in public documents with worrying ease» .

In addition to torture, the five were accused, for various reasons, of the crimes of injury, forgery, omission of official documents, embezzlement and abuse of office. The agents involved had already been transferred to other positions in the aftermath of the closure of the investigation activities, which started by chance from the interception of a policeman in the context of another proceeding. The agent, speaking with his fiancée, said, referring to a person held in custody: "What a pine cone I gave him, he collapsed on the ground in a faint."

But other agents are also under investigation in the investigation, who allegedly witnessed the violence and did nothing. And in fact , the commissioner of Verona Roberto Massucci has also ordered the removal from their posts of 23 other policemen who, although they did not take part directly in the violence, may not have prevented or in any case not reported the abuses. Whoever had to investigate did so, in any case, without giving anyone any discounts.