The mayor of Ferrara, Alan Fabbri of the League, has announced a municipal task force inside the local police called Nam, short for nucleo anti maranza. He presents it as a response to the phenomenon and as a first experiment at national level. Matteo Salvini, national leader of the League, welcomed the plan and said it should be replicated in other cities across Italy.
The municipality says the unit will put Ferrara council on the front line and involve lawyers, psychologists, social workers, officers and security experts. Its role is described as prevention as well as control and repression. The announcement refers to recent events that, according to the council, left entire cities in Italy devastated, as happened in Bologna and Milan. Asked what the unit will be able to do in practice, the municipality has not given details. It has also not confirmed reports that former League councillor Nicola Lodi would lead it. Lodi was previously suspended under the effects of the Severino law and was later convicted over an eviction carried out with a bulldozer in a Roma camp.
Fabbri said he was among the first mayors in Italy to raise the alarm about maranza and was called a racist for doing so. He said entire cities have been devastated, looted and put to fire and the sword by people who, in his view, do not deserve any rights in society. He said he will not wait for something serious to happen in Ferrara, that the safety of residents comes first, and that he will not take a step back.
What the unit will do in concrete terms is still unclear, and the name is already disputed. Opposition lawyer Fabio Anselmo, a challenger in the municipal elections, called it low-level propaganda and a waste of public money on which the opposition will seek clarity. He described the wording as ghettoising, stigmatising and racist, and as a sign of dark times, adding that young people, their problems and real prevention are something else. Ilaria Baraldi of the Democratic Party's regional secretariat said the city is not a powder keg and that those who run it are doing everything to light the fuse.