“Forced to meet with Covid”. The letter from the parents of the suicidal carabinieri against the Marescialli school

Beatrice Belcuore took her own life in April, the family denounces the rules of the School

ROME – In October Beatrice Belcuore is ill. She has Covid, a high fever, she was ill. She has to get up from her cot and take part in the morning rally at 6.15am. The girl, enrolled in the second of the three-year course at the Carabinieri Marshals and Brigadiers School, vents her anger at her father, also a Carabinieri. Who telephones the platoon commanding officer to ask for explanations. The officer gets angry, feels overtaken, even attacked. And then the commanding officer of the company telephones Mr. Belcuore and reproaches him that his daughter “as a subordinate should not have allowed herself to call the school and that she should have respected the hierarchical scale”. Beatrice Belcuore committed suicide with her service pistol inside the school on April 22nd. He was 25 years old. The family wrote a letter in which they denounced the conditions bordering on hazing which had become unbearable for the young Carabiniera. It was published, with a response, on Unarma police union. There are also all the correspondence between the family and the school.

According to the letter, the girl showed “symptoms attributable to a condition of strong psychophysical stress”. “She necessarily had to keep her hair tied up, pulled to the point that she was losing it, even to go to the swimming pool.” She herself had said that the rules were very strict and sometimes illogical: for example “girls cannot wear Doctor Martens or Timberland boots during free rides”. She also said that attending school was “ruining her life”.

The policewoman’s death was communicated to her father on the telephone, while “he was in the car”, without “showing empathy towards the family”.

Belcuore’s parents write that the police force “has the duty to continually question the state of mental health of its personnel and to look the men and women in uniform in the eyes, even before looking at the rank they wear “.