(by John Blackeye) The umpteenth news of the suicide that affected a young financier who came out of the training school just over a year ago came yesterday.
The 2020 suicides between law enforcement and the armed forces already amount to 22 cases. In 2019 there were 69 suicides. We hope that in 2020 the phenomenon will stop here and the trend of the previous year will not be confirmed.
It can be reasonably said that if we add those of the previous years to those of the last two years, the number of the unfortunate reaches and exceeds hundreds of people.
What seems to emerge at first glance is that something is not going well in the functional hierarchical system that concerns the organizations of all the Bodies and Weapons in which these tragic events occurred. It seems that there is no contact between the heads of the institutions and the base or if the contact exists, who should look back to check that everything is going well under his level is perhaps busy looking ahead.
In Italy and in particular in law enforcement, there is an unwritten rule which is to achieve the objectives set, always. Bankruptcy is not expected. Thanks to the development of a career often made of pushes between colleagues, stress accumulates daily also due to high workloads to be borne to keep the performance of the Bodies high, as required by the nation itself, by needs.
This entails the consequent day-to-day and unlimited commitment of the hundreds of thousands of men and women in uniform who are often forced to sacrifice their family for work. The trend of family separations in this particular sector of public institutions reaches peaks that deserve a separate evaluation.
The Armed Forces, in particular, have been subject to a restrictive revision which, without prejudice to the operating standards necessary to guarantee the security of the country, have led to a thinning out of the ranks in progress since 140 thousand men to about ninety thousand. Competitions are banned for a few staff units so much so that to access the military career today you must be a scientist. It is clear that then the graduate and prepared boy - the only one able to pass the most difficult competition tests - who is looking for a job in the Defense sector, has to deal with a personal frustration that sees him on the one hand having to earn the bread to live and on the other hand having to scream means every time someone gives him a task to do.
The Guardia di Finanza, on the other hand, seems to lack a generational change that could allow to cover the positions that will be left free shortly by the elderly close to leave with young staff introduced into the Corps.
Everything is the fruit in a context of austerity introduced by previous governments with the blocking of new hires and a need to still have to ensure the security of the state and public order, which does not allow anyone who wears the uniform, to stay calm and serene to count the sheep that climb over the fence.
The generational gap created by those austerity policies, are now giving their disastrous results given that the cessation of service of thousands of military elders corresponds to an increase in the number of staff. Result? Few men and really busy.
On the other hand, there is a social reality that opens the doors of law enforcement to a slice of youth who is light years away from the sense of discipline and hierarchy that continues to feed itself in the Defense sector. These young people, often first in the class who at other times would have coveted positions as managers in national corporate structures or who could have been part of national health or engineering, today they are often forced to pursue a career they don't like. The selection procedure, therefore, should not be based on cultural preparation. In this case only the first in the class will continue to be enrolled but not the motivated. It is necessary to review the selection criterion to investigate well, in psychological terms, if the path taken by these children is the right one or if it is yet another fallback in a society that does not allow other outlets.
In 2020 twenty-two boys have already made the wrong decision. They ended it. Let's do something before the phenomenon becomes chronic and part of a national statistic.