Humanism and Riot Squads

 “Public Disorder” Netflix limited series by Michele Alhaique, 2025

The original title of the 2012 book this Italian series is based on was All Cops Are Bastards i.e. ACAB. It is centered around a riot squad, the Roma 3 Mobile Police Unit, which is sent into conflict situations on a regular basis. The squad chants this phrase ACAB in their police van and even in a hospital, pounding the glass, taking perverse pride in the designation.  So you suspect this 6 part series will be about how crooked and brutal they are.  And it certainly starts out that way until you realize the purpose of the series is to humanize the cops who have to do this crappy job for the capitalist state.

Environmental confrontation

It starts in the Val di Susa valley near Turin where the squad is called in to defend a high-speed rail construction project against environmentalists and masked ‘commies’ defending a mountain.  It’s nighttime, the two sides push and battle with shields and clubs, then a retreat by the protesters, then a fragmentation Molotov severely injures the leader of the squad, Pietro.  In revenge a veteran cop, Mazinga, leads an attack on the protesters, who scatter.  His squad goes through the woods, finding some of the protesters down near a river and beats them severely, sending one into a coma and eventually death.

That event haunts the rest of the series.  The ‘blue wall of silence,’ the police / Mafia code of omerta is used to stymy the internal police investigation. All but Marta, the one woman in the unit, sign a declaration of what didn’t happen, hiding the truth.  A new, ‘professional’ leader, Michele, is assigned to the unit, as the police boss knows Roma 3 goes rogue sometimes.  Michele had previously testified against two fellow police officers who beat a suspect.  He also seems to have a normal home life, with a teenaged daughter and loving wife, unlike other cops in the unit.  He understands that some tactics escalate confrontations and don’t calm them down. 

But the rest of Roma 3 have the typical TV cop personal problems.  Marta is divorced with a young daughter after being beaten by her husband.  Pietro found out he was getting a divorce before he was injured and paralyzed, perhaps accounting for him being vulnerable, ahead of his squad.  Mazinga is already divorced and lives alone, having an alienated older son who hated the way he treated his mother.  The most intense and lonely thug in the unit, Salvo, has fallen for an internet ‘catfishing’ woman, and sent her money sight unseen.  He feels the fool.

All these domestic situations affect the whole crew’s anger and judgment in difficult situations, even affecting the ‘good’ cop Michele eventually. The crew is sent to stop nationalist English soccer hooligans in Rome from running rampant.  They are assigned to protect a Roma woman and children besieged by angry racist neighbors in a housing project when she, instead of an Italian, is allocated an apartment. They are shipped off to protect a ‘dump’ site in a rural area against environmental protesters who don’t want it there.  Lastly they stand guard on Rome’s Via del Corso on December 31, New Year’s Eve, in anticipation of any trouble.

Roma 3 Mobile Police Unit

“Character development” seems to be the Writing Course 1001 theme of this series.  The old, angry cop, Mazinga, decides he can’t do the job anymore, as it has deformed his whole life.  He resigns and makes approaches to his alienated son.  He eventually becomes a tragic figure. The hurt and angry Marta slowly allows her daughter to spend time with the father.  Salvo forgives the woman who took his money.  And Michele, the ‘good’ cop, loses it at the dump site and then hides evidence of what happened when the unit beat the protesters by the river.  His wayward daughter is perhaps sexually assaulted and he batters the boy who did it, with help from the rest of the ‘band of brothers’ or ‘band of thugs.’ The bad cops turns good, the good cop turns bad, yadda, yadda, yadda.  Does ‘character development’ actually happen in real life or is it only a liberal pretense?  For this series, it seems to be the latter.

So the purpose is to humanize the squad members, whose job in just about physical force, with feminism a lurking presence against police and military machismo. It also serves to slyly justify police brutality, because cops are human after all.  Other than the mother of the injured protester, who we see on TV, there is no humanization of the commies or protesters, nor the anti-gypsy types, nor the English soccer thugs.  In fact the anarcho-communists, masked in black with clubs who come out on New Year’s Eve to attack the squad, are the most sinister presence.  The series seems to riff off of the ‘Years of Lead’ – ‘anni di piombo’ - when Left battled Right and police on a constant, violent basis in Italy.  Does this still go on much in Italy?  I do not think so.

Police, unlike soldiers or national guard, rarely come over to the Left.  The real presence behind Roma 3 is the capitalist state, which needs them to get things done.  Here we are dealing with a symptom of a system, not a cause.  The real ‘public disorder’ goes far beyond personal lives, Roma 3 cops, protesters, anti-social types or even racists.   

Prior blogspot reviews on this subject, use blog search box, upper left, to investigate our 19 year archive, using these terms:  “Italy,” “police,” “Negri,” “Gramsci.”  

The Cultural Marxist / January 20, 2025