Sensationalism in crime reporting

The death of a person during an arrest, regardless of their nationality, profession or the circumstances leading up to police intervention, raises inevitable and disturbing questions. In Bologna, the arrest of a Moroccan porter who had become violent and damaged a car ended in tragedy. There is talk of a possible asthma attack; the manner in which the man was restrained and the timing of the medical response will need to be investigated. There is a video, internal inquiries and a judicial investigation. This is exactly how the rule of law should work: gathering evidence, establishing the facts, and identifying any liability. What is not helpful – indeed, what hinders the search for the truth – is immediately turning a news story into a political cause. On the left, some in the debate have already decided that the Bologna police behaved like the US ICE, as if the victim’s nationality were sufficient to prove the racist nature of the operation. On the right, the mirror-image reaction is to argue that the police are right by definition, that anyone who is arrested is automatically responsible for their own death, and that any question amounts to an accusation against the police.

It is the same kind of short-circuit seen in the case of Mario Roggero, but with the roles reversed. In that case, a section of the right did not wait for the verdicts, failed to distinguish between self-defence and pursuit or revenge, and refused to accept that it was up to the judges to reconstruct the facts. They sided with the shopkeeper against the robbers and, on the basis of this moral division, decided in advance who was in the right. In Bologna, a section of the left risks doing the same: it sides with the victim against the police and derives its verdict from the identity of those involved. The symmetry is clear. On the one hand, fear is transformed into a pre-emptive acquittal; on the other, suspicion is transformed into a pre-emptive conviction. In both cases, security is governed by the force of emotions, not by the rule of law. Roggero becomes the hero because he shot the robbers; the Moroccan porter becomes proof of racist abuse before the investigation has clarified how he died. But the facts do not become any truer simply because they confirm our side’s prejudice.

Politics should have the courage to stop one step short of a makeshift court. Defending the police also means insisting that every one of their actions is subject to scrutiny. Defending a victim also means not using them as propaganda material. Justice does not consist of immediately choosing which side to take. It consists of allowing evidence, witness statements and accountability to be established without the clamour of the crowd.