Hard-up Police Have to Hitch Ride

Tourists travelling on the ferry to St Mark's Square in Venice recently may have noticed that some fellow passengers were particularly impatient.

They were police officers responding to an emergency call after a Senegalese street vendor threatened to blow up the basilica. It turned out to be a false alarm, possibly a fit of madness brought on by the early June heat, but it rang alarm bells about the preparedness of the Italian police, who are battling an acute nationwide cash crisis. On the day of the basilica emergency not one of Venice's 17 police patrol boats was working, forcing the police to take the vaporetto like everybody else.

"At the moment up to 80% of Italian police vehicles are out of action because we don't have the funds to repair them," said Franco Maccari, a chief inspector from Venice and national secretary of the SAP police trade union. "Here the problem is amplified by the fact that we use boats.

"Repairs are more complex and expensive and the boatyards refuse to carry them out unless they are paid in advance. They prefer customers who don't take forever to pay."

The interior ministry's financial crisis is surprising: fighting crime has been a priority of Silvio Berlusconi's government. "They have put more policemen on the beat, but without the instruments to do their work properly," Mr Maccari said.

"We have bulletproof vests which went out of date five years ago and officers who haven't fired their pistols in two years because the practice ranges have been closed for lack of money." Mr Maccari, whose organisation represents 22,000 officers, said policemen had been waiting for years for new uniforms as a result of problems with the European tender for their supply. Some had been forced to buy their own.