Word: celiento
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...guess you want the folklore now." Municipal police officer Alfonso Celiento has just run down the long list of laws regulating public behavior in Naples, from smoking in bars to scooter riding to selling kitchenware on a street corner. He's right: Neapolitans are famed for breaking picayune laws, but it's the city's major crimes that have been making headlines. Unemployment hovers around 20%, and the murder rate is consistently among the highest in Europe. There were 55 homicides in the first two months of the year--many of them victims of warring factions of the organized-crime...
...Celiento, 50, seems perfectly cast to play the part of policeman in this pulsating Mediterranean city: quick-witted and classically handsome, with salt-and-pepper hair, mirrored sunglasses and a well-pressed blue uniform. But he's not cracking Mob cases. He's using the STOP paddle in his right hand to pull taxis over at random--checking if their meters are rigged--and show passing motorists in hectic Piazza Garibaldi that the Law is indeed watching, if mostly for minor violations...
...traffic passing Celiento that a 2000 helmet law for riders of those ubiquitous mopeds, while obeyed by Italians from all points north, is still treated in Naples as optional. Entire families of four whiz by, squeezed on a scooter built for two, often with young, helmetless kids. It is a disquieting sight for even a Milanese or a Florentine, let alone a Northern European or an American, who wonders if this southern pocket of Europe somehow got left behind. Adding to the unease are picturesque streets in the historic center littered with trash as well as warnings from locals...
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