the moment the intervention escalates

The scuffle by the car: the moment the intervention changes

Until then the officers had kept their distance for about twenty minutes. This is where the intervention changes in nature.

THE SCENE. Shortly after 12.36, in the garage courtyard at number 6 of via Italo Svevo, there are Fakir, the two police officers, the four Red Cross volunteers who have stayed back, and some residents. A car drives in, heading for one of the garages.

WHAT THE OFFICERS' SERVICE REPORT SAYS. The driver gets out. Fakir attacks him: he shoves him, shouts at him and punches the bonnet of the car, “leaving a mark on it”. It is then that the officers step in to restrain him. [il Resto del Carlino, 22 July]

THE DAMAGE TO THE CAR. One punch, one mark on the bonnet. That is what appears in the service report. Some later accounts also mention the windscreen. There is NO public record of any complaint or criminal complaint for criminal damage, and the damage to the car does not feature among the elements of the investigation. What the report treats as the trigger is not damage to the vehicle: it is the assault on a person.

A DISCREPANCY THAT MUST BE KEPT IN VIEW. Sources differ on how many people got out of the car. According to the officers' report it is THE DRIVER, one person. According to accounts based on the bodycam footage broadcast by Tg1 on 23 July, TWO MEN get out, driver and passenger, both caught up in the scuffle. This is not a detail: it changes whether the officers were protecting someone under attack or separating several people fighting each other.

WHAT THE BODYCAM SHOWS. The hands of the two officers grip the arms of a man in a white T-shirt to separate him from another in a red one. The detail is not secondary: the officers grip THE OTHER MAN TOO, not only Fakir. That indicates that at the critical moment the occupant of the car was physically engaged. The bodycam is switched on moments before the intervention and then records everything: the restraint, the arrival of the emergency services, the resuscitation. The video has been handed to the prosecutor's office.

WHO THE TWO MEN FROM THE CAR ARE. This has not been made public, nor is their position in the proceedings known. No source states that they struck Fakir or obstructed the operation: to attribute that to them would be supposition.

THE CIVILIANS WHO HELD FAKIR DOWN. Four Pilastro residents, at different moments and in different ways. The most visible is a Kosovar man, bare-chested, who held the ankles down for the longest time, continuing even when Fakir had stopped moving and assisting the officers as they tied his feet. According to accounts gathered among residents, it was the officers who asked a member of the public to help them. At least one of the four has already been questioned by prosecutors; the Kosovar man, as of 30 July, had not. It has NOT been disclosed whether the two men from the car are among these four.

THE TWO READINGS. For Gabriele Bordoni, the officers' lawyer: “There is a moment of contact with other people who were near a car and who come into contact with him: at that point it is clear that the officers have to intervene”. For Fabio Anselmo, the family's lawyer: the earlier footage shows that Fakir was still able to hold a conversation and that before being taken down he had no visible injuries to his head or face; the publicly released bodycam extracts do not make it possible to establish how serious the scuffle was, or whether the intervention was proportionate.

WHAT REMAINS TO BE ESTABLISHED. The full bodycam recording has not been made public: only extracts have circulated. Until it has been examined in full and cross-checked against the other footage, it is not possible to say how long the scuffle lasted, who did what, and whether the force used after the takedown was proportionate.