Blocked with batons, three policemen under investigation in Milan – Lombardy

Investigated by the Milan prosecutor’s office and subjected to internal disciplinary proceedings. This is what happens to the local police officers protagonists of the video, which has gone around the web and sparked controversy, in which they repeatedly truncheon and kick a transsexual woman, known as Bruna, to block her. Three of the four agents have been entered in the register of suspects by the Public Prosecutor’s Office on charges of injuries also aggravated by abuse of the public function. In the investigation coordinated by the adjunct Tiziana Siciliano and by the prosecutor Giancarla Serafini, a fourth agent, a woman, who did not take part in the alleged violence, was not investigated.

A disciplinary procedure will also be triggered for all four policemen, as announced by the mayor Giuseppe Sala, according to which the behavior of the agents as seen in the video “appeared serious and not in line with the modus operandi of the many commit with dedication to our city”. A sensation confirmed by the report that the commander of the local police, Marco Ciacci, handed over to the mayor this morning. “After collecting information, Ciacci formally presented me with a more precise picture of what happened and this leads me to confirm the assessment of the first moment – Sala explained – I believe it is right at this point to start the disciplinary procedure pertaining to the municipal administration, waiting for the judicial authority to complete more in-depth assessments and intervene with the measures within its competence”. The four agents now risk suspension or dismissal, measures that will be evaluated by the competent offices. Yesterday Bruna, the 42-year-old trans woman who was stopped by the police because according to an initial reconstruction she was annoying the children of the Trotter park school, filed a complaint against the officers for injuries aggravated by the abuse of public function and discrimination. In her complaint, her lawyer also contested torture and the aggravating circumstance that punishes crimes committed “for the purposes of ethnic, racial and religious discrimination”.

According to the woman and her lawyer, in fact, the agents would have been fierce on her as a transsexual. After having received a report from the investigators of the local police with an indication of the presumed responsibilities of the agents and the precise identifications reconstructed through the frames of the videos acquired, the deputy Tiziana Siciliano and the prosecutor Giancarla Serafini, with the coordination of the prosecutor Marcello Viola, enrolled the three agents: two, in particular, as emerged from the images, would have behaved more violently, including beatings, kicks and pepper spray sprayed in the face, but a third agent would also have participated. “Here we also talk about torture and it seems absurd to me – said the secretary of the Sulpl union Daniele Vincini, commenting on the proceedings initiated against cast iron – Our colleagues are in shock, they are subjected to the media pillory and massacred by everyone. Now we it will be the via crucis between the disciplinary and judicial proceedings, they are in a bad situation, abandoned by everyone but not by the union”.

Meanwhile, yesterday morning the woman’s lawyer, the lawyer Debora Piazza, presented a complaint with the report of the injuries (essential for the continuation of the investigation) indicating as crimes the injuries aggravated by the abuse of the public function but also by discrimination, the torture and serious threats. According to the woman and her lawyer, her agents would have been fierce on her as a transsexual. The torture was indicated because after the alleged beating, the lawyer clarified, the woman “was kept locked inside the police car for at least 20 minutes”, after they had sprayed “pepper spray in her face”. The investigators, as had already emerged in recent days, have decided to challenge the three policemen for injuries aggravated by the fact that they were “several people gathered” and by the abuse of public functions. With this step, the policemen will be able to be interrogated in the presence of their lawyers.