Current Events > Italy hires cute petite teen viola player to combat rampant drug crime epidemic.

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The town of Ceriano Laghetto is at the heart of a drugs curse in Lombardy. The local mayor has tried a spate of measures to repel the epidemic. Now the council has a new weapon to combat drug abuse and dealers: a 19-year-old viola player.

What was once a lush green park and natural reserve on the outskirts of Monza, just north of Milan, has become a pusher's paradise. The Groane park stretches into the provinces of Monza-Brianza and Varese and cuts across 20 councils. One in particular, Ceriano Laghetto, is facing a drugs epidemic disproportionate to its size.

Hundreds of customers travel by train from across Lombardy to this small town of 6,500 people to purchase illegal drugs such as cocaine and heroine on a daily basis.

The problem began when the Ceriano Laghetto-Groane train station was reopened, after 50 years of being closed, in 2012. "For six years we have been penalized by the station's opening. The line has been taken hostage by drug addicts from across the region," Dante Cattaneo, Ceriano Laghetto's mayor

More than 30 drug-dealing locations exist according to Cattaneo in the vast 3,800-hectare Groane park, Lombardy's second largest, although only the Ceriano Laghetto-Groane train station leads to the heart of the dense woods where dozens of dealers, mainly from the Maghreb, have made it their 'supermarket' in recent years.

The dealers have become so self-confident that a sign at the station once advertised that the Groane park is open 24 hours for drug transactions, reports local daily Monza Today.

Each month, the council and a team of volunteers "occupy" the woods in the park to clean up syringes and other drug refuse and to remind dealers that they do not have carte blanche to operate. In March this year, 80 police officers from Italy's 'carabinieri' division raided the park

But the problem persists. The Groane park stretches to nearly 4,000 hectares and is home to hundreds of pathways hidden in the dense woods. "The dealers have become much more mobile in recent years, which has made it hard to track them," Cattaneo told The Local.

It is not only the drug dealing that is the problem. Users often inject in the park, turning an area used by local residents, and children, into a drug wasteland.

Faced with a crime ring that generates between 5 million and 6 million in drugs revenues per year, according to L'Espresso, the local council has unveiled a new weapon to combat the bane: a petite 19-year-old viola player, Asha Fusi.

"Bringing culture to the Groane park is one of the means of countering the phenomenon of dealing that has been here for years," Asha Fusi, a councillor responsible for culture in the afflicted municipality of Ceriano Laghetto, told The Local.

Late last month, Fusi became part of a new plan to tackle the drug problem. Armed with nothing but a viola and Italian composer Benedetto Marcello's Concerto in G, the teenage musician began playing classical music right in the middle of the park where drug users come to buy from dealers.

The sound of live music temporarily deterred the dealers and scared away their clients. "As soon as I started playing they left, as if frightened by the presence of people who are not their clients,"
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The Italian music student believes that if classical notes can have such an impact, then an army intervention could certainly do more.

The town's mayor, Dante Cattaneo, is determined to combat the scourge. Local police and volunteer members of the community now monitor the pathway from the station to the park; the council has a mobile unit that also patrols the park and further town council meetings are scheduled at the station of Ceriano Laghetto-Groane to confront the problem head on.

"Intervening with music makes me understand how even the little things can help. Each of us should fight to reclaim the woods," says Fusi. "People should be able to go out for a walk, take a train or simply be able to return to live quietly, without the terror of stepping on syringes or worse."

Similar cultural interventions to confront social ills have been tested around the world. A father in Paris used classical music to scare away dealers from below his window. Businesses in Seattle have blurred country, classical and opera music to deter crime near their offices. The former mayor of the Colombian capital Bogota sent mimes out to control traffic.

In Ceriano Laghetto, customers looking to buy drugs continue to flood into the small town via the train station and more than music will be needed if the park is to be cleaned up.

But the council isn't giving up. "I am convinced that combating the culture of drugs and therefore that of death with art and in particular with music is a very strong 'weapon'. Of course, it is not enough, but it is already an important message from a symbolic point of view,"

Full Article: https://www.thelocal.it/20180918/the-tiny-italian-town-fighting-a-drugs-epidemic-with-classical-music


Have we ever tried simply sending a petite teenage viola player to the Gaza Strip?

It's worth a shot.
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this wouldn't have happened if Italians had guns

italia mi piace!
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Reis posted...

this wouldn't have happened if Italians had guns

Lots of Italians do
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