I confess to not having much to do with the Arma Dei Carabinieri but I have always been slightly curious what role they play versus the polizia in Italy.
Recently, I read an article that helped explain it. As it turns out, the carabinieri are celebrating their 200th birthday this year. In other words, they are older than the Republic of Italy itself which was unified in 1861.
They were founded by Victor Emmanuel I who was the Duke of Savoy and the King of Sardinia. In those days, Italy was a series of regional dynasties each with its own language/dialect and each with its own police force. The name carabinieri actually comes from the rifles they carried — the carabina. When Italy was unified, the royal court became the nationwide military presence and functioned as a duplicate police force in part because of the need to have some unified police presence in a country that was still much divided with towns and regions that saw themselves as more powerful than this entity called Italia.
Not much has changed today. If you are desperate for help, it is not always clear who will show up at your door. In Italy you dial either 112 or 113 whereas in the USA we dial 911. One thing for sure is that two men or women will show up. In Italy, the cops always ride in pairs. This is a change from several years ago when the cops rode in threes and that was in a two-door car!
What is fascinating about the carabinieri is that they are set up a little bit like a military operation. To apply to be a carabinieri, you have to commit to eight years working outside of the province that you live in. Hence the number of southerners that end up working in the north in those carabinieri staziones. Seventy-percent of the entire force comes from four regions in particular – Sicily, Campania, Calabria, and Puglia. These are the same four regions that are the mafia strongholds.
The carabinieri are everywhere. I remember bumping into two of them on a recent ski trip at the top of a station in Cervinia. They were all decked out looking like a couple of Armani models in state-of-the-art ski gear with the words “Carabinieri” plastered all over them. They were keeping an eye on the vigilantes in the mountains no doubt!
They are the butt of many jokes in Italy but the fact is that they represent more than anything the difficulties of integrating all of these diverse regions with different accents, different languages, and different codes of honor under one umbrella. They are not frightening and seem free of corruption. If you ask me who I would rather bump into on the highway, a state cop or a carabinieri, I think that I would choose the carabinieri. Let’s face it – I am less likely to get a speeding ticket that way. It is Italy after all!