https://www.flickr.com/photos/37698620@N06/4398919299
On September 29, 2008, 22-year-old Emmanuel Foster Bonsu, of Ghanaian origin, was stopped, beaten to a pulp, denigrated and offended by a group of ten traffic police officers in Parma. This violence represents one of the most serious cases of institutional racism in our country. There was an initial attempt (but also continued during the judicial process) to deny the seriousness and responsibility of the incident on the part of both the police and the institution they represented, relying, evidently, on a shameless presumption of impunity. Emmanuel’s statements, the collection of testimony and some incontestable evidence lead to the issuing of a notice of guarantee against ten police officers, including a Chief Inspector and a Commissioner. The charges are very serious: aggravated beatings, slander, insult, racist insults and threats, arbitrary search, abuse of office, ideological and material forgery, kidnapping. Today, Emmanuel Bonsu no longer lives in our country, he moved to London in 2014. One wonders whether the psychological pressure he suffered due to the endless length of the judicial process, which led only in 2018 (ten years later) to a final condemnation of the main perpetrator of the racist violence he suffered, also contributed to this choice. To retrace the long judicial process and learn about the elements of the investigation that supported the recognition of the racist aggravating circumstance for the sentence imposed on two of the police officers involved, download the contribution below.
