From rural police bodies to simple "lookouts". The barracelli are in alarm, they fear being transformed into security guards and losing all the tasks and powers that the penal code attributes to them. "While we continue to hope that the current political structure at the helm of the Region will begin to characterize, finally recognizing the 6,000 women and men of the Barracellis scattered in over 170 municipalities in Sardinia, that role and function of rural police which every day, for about For 400 years, they perform at the service of local communities, only the darkest bureaucratic short-sightedness continues to keep them out of the ranks of the local police bodies which the Compagnie dei Barracelli are to all intents and purposes», write the Unione dei Barracelli organizations in a statement. Barracelli Autonomous Union, Regional Autonomous Union of Local Police Operators and Conf.Ba.R.

«The Compagnie dei Barracelli represent the first civil police force in Europe, whose foundations date back to the times of Eleonora d'Arborea, they are also the expression of a regional autonomy, as regards the powers in matters of local urban police and rural, which many Italian regions would have liked. No other Italian region has an armed corps of rural police which carries out its institutional duties in the manner in which the Barracellis do it. We hope with all our strength that the regional legislator, who was the first to express himself publicly in favor of the barracks in the process of taking office and on the strength of the opinions of the Ministry of Justice and the Interior, when drafting the new bill on the barracks, eliminate this further manifestation of insensitivity towards a category that with equal dignity, abnegation and sacrifice, together with other local police bodies, contributes in a decisive way to the livability of local communities and to the safety of citizens in rural areas and in small towns where they are absent other local and state police principals, the barracelli represent an irreplaceable garrison of legality ", concludes the note.