Security for Mafia-fighting Italian magistrate Nicola Gratteri is so high that he couldn’t attend his own father’s funeral in the southern Italian province of Calabria. He only dreams of going to a restaurant or the beach or strolling down the street, eating an ice cream cone. His home in Reggio Calabria is a police station. Police once foiled a plot plant dynamite under a road he travelled, in armoured cars, with a cadre of body-guards. For the past quarter-century, the security has gotten tighter and tighter – in Italy and abroad – as he helps put more members of the Calabrian Mafia – or ‘Ndrangheta – behind bars.
So why is it that when Gratteri visited Toronto recently, the RCMP provided no security? That’s a question a lot of people – especially in Italy – are asking at the moment. I wonder how long it will be before the next top-level Italian crime-fighter comes for a visit.
I know this isn’t a Bandido posting, but I feel it fits anyway. The Canadian Bandidos were slammed as organized crime, when they were often just a Keystone Kops version of bad guys. Gratteri is locking up real organized criminals, and somehow he’s deemed not worth a bodyguard while in Canada.