More on the Necklace Muggers of Milan

On Thursday I reported on the culture-enriching “necklace muggers” of Milan, who prowl the nightlife district of Darsena in packs, searching for sufficiently affluent prey.

The following report from Italian television discusses the same topic. Many thanks to Gary Fouse for the translation, and to Vlad Tepes and RAIR Foundation for the subtitling:

Video transcript:

00:01   The police called them ‘the necklace gang”, a group of young men who,
00:05   moving in a pack in the nightlife zones, attacked their victims
00:09   to rob them of jewelry, clothes, and cell phones. Now, however,
00:13   the five5 members of the group have ended up in handcuffs. Last week, in fact,
00:18   the police carried out five orders of preventative custody,
00:22   three in jail and two under house arrest of five young adults,
00:26   one Egyptian, two Tunisians, and two Moroccans,
00:30   with ages between 18 and 22 years, all already with previous records
00:35   for crimes specifically concerning the trafficking of narcotics and property crimes.
00:41   The group thus held responsible for sixteen robberies
00:45   committed almost all of them in the area of the Darsena [Milan] between June and October of 2021.
00:50   In many cases, the cases involved robberies characterized
00:54   by particular violence and brutality on the part of the pack, who operated mostly on the weekends,
01:00   in the evening and nighttime hours, blending in with the nightlife
01:04   and surrounding the victims to strip them
01:08   of jewelry, clothes and cell phones. In several cases,
01:12   there were also real beatings of the victims,
01:17   and knives and glass shards, or other offensive weapons were pointed at the throat of the victims,
01:23   in order to discourage resistance. In the course of executing the arrest
01:27   of one of the boys, a sixth subject, his brother,
01:31   was also placed under arrest and taken to jail
01:35   as the object of a custody measure for robbery
01:39   and resisting a public official, with a sentence
01:42   of two years and four months and fifteen days behind bars.
01:45   Meanwhile, there are, as of now, numerous similar criminal incidents under investigation by police
01:49   which occurred in successive months, for which the investigations are still underway.
01:54   In addition, past incidents are also under examination by investigators
01:58   that occurred between June and October,
02:01   but in which the victims, understandably frightened, are not able
02:05   to identify the perpetrators with certainty.
02:12