No Affairs For Italian Secret Police

by Tom Miller

A court in Italy ruled that members of the elite paramilitary police (the Carabinieri) are not permitted to have affairs. The group’s motto is “Faithful through the centuries” and some people think that they should live up to that sentiment not just in their commitment to the state. The US Marines‘ motto Semper Fi (”Always Faithful”) only applies to  affairs in the case of officers.

Reuters reports that the whole thing stems from an incident in which a member of the Carabinieri nearly got physical when his boss told him to end an affair he was having with a married woman. The policeman got 4 months in jail for threatening the bossman with a desk.

While we feel that extramarital are in bad taste in all but the most extreme cases, what kind of secret policeman would actually get caught? These guys should be masters of both surveillance and counter-surveillance. Seriously, WWJBD? (What Would James Bond Do?) Without the affair, how often would Bond have failed to save the world? Countless times. And maybe we’ve seen Good Fellas too many times, but the idea of anyone demanding that an Italian man cease and desist all extramarital affairs sounds like a good way to get a 1-way ticket to the bottom of a Venetian canal.