What happened? Five police officers are arrested

Five police officers were arrested in Verona, Italy, on charges of beating and torturing at least seven civilians.

They were left under house arrest and according to the competent prosecutor, "the defendants (an inspector and four policemen) instead of preventing the crimes, are suspected of having committed them themselves".

According to the Italian media, the five law enforcement officers slapped and "blinded" with pepper spray the citizens who were arrested and had to be interrogated. The prosecutor typically mentions that in one of the cases the defendants "allegedly forced a citizen to urinate inside the department's office and then lay on the floor to clean it."

In another case, one of the five police officers "hit a person so hard that he lost consciousness for several minutes".

According to the director of the Verona police, 23 other colleagues of the defendants, even if they did not participate in the torture, with their attitude may have covered up or not reported these behaviors.

The investigation that led to the arrests took about eight months.