"Don't be a scoundrel." This is how residents of the historic center of Sassari are intimidated, with threats to children, muggings and retaliation. Yesterday at dawn the first warning: four tires slashed on a resident's car . "Now they're starting to play pranks," someone who lives in the area speaks on condition of anonymity. " They're picking on us because of the cameras installed by the police ." On Tuesday, the police raided San Donato and surrounding streets, with 14 arrests (in Sassari alone) for the same number of Nigerians accused of mafia-style criminal association, drug dealing, human trafficking, money laundering, to name just the most obvious crimes. " It felt like we were at war ," one person reports. "But we saw that many of them ran away before the police arrived." Now calm seems to have returned. "But they continue to deal, without any problems ."
And speaking of drug dealing, here is the story of what has happened in recent years. "They start early in the morning. We see minors with school bags buying "bags" of coke or heroin ." The trafficking continues but the coming and going is of drug addicts, some of them very low. " We hear nothing but 'Give me the white bag, give me the black bag' all the time ." White stands for coke, black for heroin. "They cry, they beg if they don't have the money. A girl was 5 euros short the other day and they beat her up because she insisted ."
Aggression is the dominant note, but there is a remedy for not having resources and it is no less degrading: « They have sex either in homes or on the street. They prostitute themselves for a few euros ». If you rebel against this situation you do so at your own risk. « When we tell them to stop, that we call the police, they answer us: "We are not afraid of the police" ».
As the head of the Sassari mobile squad, Michele Mecca, recalled in a press conference on Tuesday, a man who dared to complain had his front door burned down. "They send drug addicts to do these things," the residents continued, "in exchange for a dose. Nigerians, on the other hand, walk around the streets with a gun sticking out of their pants ."
The drug addicts then commit repeated thefts, stealing cell phones from the elderly and their bags, breaking car windows to steal a toy for the little ones to resell for a few euros . "They took from a child," says an elderly person, "the euros he earned selling olive branches for Easter, threatening to beat him."
The degradation is accompanied by mockery. In the afternoon following the raid, "a couple of drug addicts - it is said - pulled down their pants showing their behinds to the cameras" . But there is little to laugh about because the residents live in terror and there are even small children frightened by what surrounds them. "We are afraid - some report - and on top of that the Municipality continues to fine us for parking our cars. But we cannot park our cars far away and risk them hurting us ".
Finally, the prayer to the institutions: " Help us . It seems that we are waiting for the dead. And we do not want it to be one of us."