Under investigation for soiling, they clean the ice rink

The pearl-grey does not cover completely the wall and for this reason it is clear that two days ago, under that freshly painted wall, there were other colours at the Palaghiaccio in Varese.

 

It is the same for some emergency exit doors on the ice rink, at the back, where you still can smell the fresh red paint.

Previously, there were drawings and forms of graffiti. Now, the walls are shining and freshly painted.

Yesterday and last Sunday, thirteen of those young people which today are under investigation for soiling and damage by the Republic prosecutor’s office, were cleaning up by using brushes and colours.

 

“Of course, it’s not an admission of guilt, indeed, we’re going to ask for the dismissal of our beneficiaries,” specified Martina Zanzi, one of the lawyers who defend the young people who were born in the Nineties, who, on Sunday morning, instead of having an aperitif, they met out of the ice rank to clean up a wall, one of the many other walls in Varese signed by drawings –which sometimes are real works of art- and “tags”, a sign on the wall that represent the signature of the author.

The inquiry, held by the Varese local police and coordinated by the Public Prosecutor Annalisa Palomba, has been able to catalogue five thousand pieces of graffiti, one hundred and fifty “tags” and dozens of groups which were challenging each other to do murals on building and sometimes on monuments.

Public places and also public transports have been targeted. And private buildings as well as.

 

For this reason, initially investigators denounced about thirty people, five of those were minors.

But this gesture, which represented a sign of respect of the public decorum rather than a sign of reformation – as, we repeat, they profess themselves’ innocence – could be read in favour of them, maybe carrying investigators to ask for the dismissal for “minor nature of the offence”: a hypothesis provided for the criminal code which in an article talks about “excluded punishability” in presence of specific conduct also in light of the meagreness of the damage.

A decision which would leave not compromised the criminal record of these young people and which “represent an important gesture to the social recovery”.

This is the comment of the deputy mayor Daniele Zanzi, which notes how the administration pays attention to stem declining situations, in order to avoid the “theory of the broken window”: a criminal mechanism on the capacity of “infection” of urban chaos.

“Deterioration calls deterioration and for this reason we don’t want to leave behind any parts of the city: for example, we intervened at the Roccolo, the upper part of the Gardens, and also at public baths. There are moments in which the civil society has to be strong and reappropriate the places with its tools. Also painting stained walls” specified Zanzi.

These young people –most of them have studied art and now are involved in some cultural associations-, once brushes are dried they just have to wait for the course of justice.