The officer had pleaded self-defense: During a raid on a notorious drug trafficking center in the Rogoredo district of Milan at the end of January, a dealer suddenly pointed a gun at him. To protect himself, he shot the man himself. The Moroccan was hit in the head and died a few minutes later. Lega leader and deputy prime minister Matteo Salvini immediately expressed his solidarity with the officer on social media: “I’m on the police officer’s side, without any ifs or buts.” And when the public prosecutor routinely opened investigations into manslaughter, Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni also emphasized that police officers who serve in dangerous neighborhoods like Rogoredo “must not be criminalized.”
