Detective fiction – The documentation – Part IV

Police Headquarters, Police Stations and Carabinieri Stations As you all know, each province has its own police station and, depending on its size, various public safety police stations, whether citizens or not (Rome in the city has 39, Naples 20. Florence has 5 between city and province). In almost all municipalities, however, there is at least one Carabinieri Station Command, more commonly called the Carabinieri Station . The Army also has a Provincial Command in each province and a Regional Command in each region (who would have thought?). Now, beyond the many possible topics, such as public order or territorial control, from our point of view, what we especially want to discuss in this article is the structure of the offices that carry out the investigations, those that the code of criminal procedure call PG Services .


Let's start from the provincial capital cities. First of all we have the police stations, which are organized into Divisions. Those who deal with police are mainly two: the Flying Squad , in Special Data turn divided into Sections (which vary from Police Station to Police Station, the most common being homicide, anti-robbery, narcotics, organized crime and, lately, the minors office. Here, however, you could indulge yourself as you like because nothing prevents that in a city where petty crime is very high, there is a property crimes section and none against organized crime ), which deals with the so-called. common crime, and the Digos (General Investigation Division for Special Operations) which deals with everything that has to do with terrorism and politics in general (even the Digos of the larger police stations are divided into sections, such as international, national terrorism right-wing, national left-wing, etc.).



Directing the Flying Squads and the Digos, but also the Commissariats, there are First Managers , who in the novels always end up being referred to simply (and erroneously, but it is an acceptable license) as Commissioners . In reality, no one ever addresses them as " Mr. First Manager" , or even " Commissioner" , but always with the academic title of " Doctor" . Note: anyone who speaks to a Police Commissioner in public usually addresses him with the aforementioned " Doctor" , but it is not uncommon for the nickname " Commendatore" to be used as well . Let's just open a parenthesis here on something very useful, indeed, I would say indispensable for every author of detective stories: how to report in the dialogues, in a plausible manner, the direct relationship between policemen of different qualifications.