My Spanish friend Charly was walking home from a night out, minding his own business, when he saw a garbage can that had been working way too hard. He decided to help the trash recepticle onto its side so that it could have a good night's sleep and get off its feet for a while.
A few policemen happened to see Charly's friendly gesture, and pulled up next to him, with sirens a-blarin' and lights a-flashin'.
Charly tried to explain himself, but the Carabinieri were not impressed, they insisted that he had vandalized public property, and threw him against the police car for a search. They delved into his pockets and found a car antenna and a side mirror, that Charly had righteously liberated from their slave labor positions on some Italian motorcycle.
Again the Carabinieri were not impressed.
They asked Charly where he lived and when he told them the Casa dello Studente, they knew he was foreign. They did not ask for his name, or any identifying documents, but simply slapped him in the face repeatedly and then knocked him to the ground so that they could kick him a bit. When the beating finished, the Carabinieri drove away, without taking Charly to prison or to any sort of detox facility.
When he told me the story the next day, I asked Charly why he didn't seem particularly upset that he had been beaten by government police, and racially profiled.
"Oh come on Noah," Charly told me. "In Spain it's much worse."
"And why is that?" I asked.
"Because in Spain, the police don't fight like women."
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