VZCZCXRO9196
RR RUEHAG RUEHAST RUEHDA RUEHDBU RUEHDF RUEHFL RUEHIK RUEHKW RUEHLA
RUEHLN RUEHLZ RUEHPOD RUEHROV RUEHSK RUEHSL RUEHSR RUEHVK RUEHYG
DE RUEHNP #0102 2741455
ZNR UUUUU ZZH
R 011455Z OCT 09
FM AMCONSUL NAPLES
TO RUEHC/SECSTATE WASHDC 6475
INFO RUEHZL/EUROPEAN POLITICAL COLLECTIVE
RUEHMIL/AMCONSUL MILAN 0195
RUEHFL/AMCONSUL FLORENCE 0162
RHMFIUU/COMSIXTHFLT
RHMFIUU/FBI WASHINGTON DC
RHMFIUU/DEPT OF JUSTICE WASHINGTON DC
RUEABND/DEA HQ WASHDC
RUEKJCS/SECDEF WASHDC
RUEHNP/AMCONSUL NAPLES 1227

UNCLAS NAPLES 000102 
 
SENSITIVE 
SIPDIS 
 
DEPARTMENT ALSO FOR DS; ROME ALSO FOR RSO 
 
E.O. 12958: N/A 
TAGS: PGOV KCRM ASEC CASC SNAR IT
SUBJECT: REPORT SHOWS ALARMING INCREASE IN ORGANIZED CRIME IN NAPLES 
 
REF: 08 NAPLES 36, 37 AND 38 
 
Sensitive but unclassified - handle accordingly. 
 
 
 
¶1.  (U) A report issued on September 30 by the Rome-based 
research institute Censis, and funded by the Italian 
Parliament's Anti-Mafia Committee, concludes that organized 
crime is on the rise throughout Italy but constitutes "a true 
national emergency" in the greater Naples area.  The report is 
based on statistics (mostly from 2007, the most recent 
available) compiled by the Italian Interior Ministry, 
prosecutors' offices and other law enforcement entities.   In 
the province of Naples (which includes Naples city and some 
surrounding suburbs), 95 percent of the population co-exists 
with active organized crime gangs, the highest percentage of any 
province in the country.  In the last three years, 25 municipal 
governments have been dissolved due to Mafia infiltration, eight 
of them in Naples province.  In 2007, 119 homicides nation-wide 
were attributed to organized crime; of these, 85 occurred in the 
region of Campania, with 80 of them in Naples province. 
Naples's overall murder rate was more thirteen times the 
national average:  2.6 per 100 residents in Naples, as compared 
to 0.2 for the country as a whole.  (For comparison, the 
homicide rate for Detroit, which had the highest rate for big 
cities in the United States for the same period, was 0.46 per 
100 residents.)  Naples also has the highest rates of extortion, 
arson and loan sharking, according to the number of arrests and 
complaints to the police. 
 
 
 
¶2.  (U) The Censis report describes the situation in Naples and 
its suburbs as "a true emergency... [in which there has been] an 
increase in all organized crime-related felonies, especially the 
most violent and heinous."  In fact, over the last four years, 
the region of Campania has registered a whopping upsurge of 61.3 
percent in Mafia-related crimes.  The region also leads the 
nation in drug-related offenses, both in absolute and per capita 
terms.  Although a small number of victims denounce extortion 
(1230, or 21.2 per 100,000 inhabitants), the extorters are more 
than capable of exacting revenge; arson in Campania is up a 
whopping 322.8 percent and in some provinces over 700 percent. 
 
 
 
¶3.  (U) On September 28, workers protesting layoffs from waste 
removal firms with now-expired municipal contracts unfurled a 
banner in the city's main square that exclaimed, "Long Live The 
Casalesi" (in reference to one of the Naples area's most 
powerful Camorra clans).  A spokesman for the workers intimated 
that if their jobs were not renewed, the Casalesi clan could 
again disrupt the precarious waste disposal system and provoke 
yet another garbage crisis in the city.  Politicians and 
journalists denounced the act as an attempt to intimidate and 
blackmail Naples into paying for thousands of jobs whose 
occupants will be indebted to the local Mafia bosses. 
 
 
 
¶4.  (SBU) Comment:  Reports of violent and brazen crimes fill 
the local newspapers each day.  Our prosecutor contacts tell us 
that the economic crisis has strengthened Camorra clans, as the 
liquid revenues they take in from the drug trade allow them to 
offer jobs and credit to those who can find neither 
legitimately.  The prospect of another trash crisis may be 
looming, as garbage and construction waste have begun to 
reappear on sidewalks and streets around the city as well as in 
suburban areas; only one of four planned incinerators has 
actually been built.  No one doubts that the Camorra could shut 
down the disposal process and plunge Naples into another crisis. 
 In the meantime, the central government's decision in August 
2008 to deploy army troops to help police tackle crime in 
Campania appears to have had little impact on the Camorra's grip 
on the region or on the growing crime rates.  With thousands of 
U.S. Navy personnel and family members living and working in the 
provinces of Naples and Caserta, and the Consulate and its 
personnel located in Naples, this is no longer a threat that 
official Americans can ignore. 
 
TRUHN