In Scampia, Italy's most notorious housing estate, the Naples mafia,
the Camorra, is ready for the police.
In Scampia, roadblocks every 50 metres randomly check cars for drugs or
other offences. Officers with flak jackets and sub-machineguns stand
watch. The streets are empty, windows shut. Scampia is the beginning of
an annual =A310 billion "cocaine motorway" which connects Naples to
affluent drug-sniffers in Milan, Turin and the industrial north.
The sheer quantity of cocaine moving through the area is enormous.
Police have intercepted three tonnes of pure cocaine in shipments
arriving at Naples port already this month.
One building became known as the "drugs ATM" because addicts could push
cash through a hole and receive their fix without ever seeing their
dealer's face.
The money has also sparked a bloody turf war, since a single cocaine
shipment can deliver enough profits for a gang to mount a serious push
for domination over the city's piazzas. There has been a power vacuum
in Naples since a 2004 mafia war, when many of the older bosses were
either arrested or killed in a series of tit-for-tat killings. Mr
Lepore said the clans were using "younger and more ruthless gangsters,
who are often high on their own drugs".
The volatile situation has claimed at least 70 lives in gang battles
this year. The latest came last week, when two members of the Camorra
hijacked an ambulance and used it in a drive-by shooting. A few days
earlier, the son-in-law of one family boss was executed outside a cafe.
An estimated 50,000 people in the city either belong to the Camorra,
are related to a member or depend on the syndicate for cash. The 13,500
Naples' police are hopelessly outnumbered.
Similar operations are being mounted almost every day, but the results
are not inspiring confidence in either the police or the public. The
raid in Forcella did not yield any arrests, and only 15 arrests were
made in the city, no more than a normal day.
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