Bloody scores being settled and streets invaded by waste have tarnished the picture-perfect image of Naples. Diverse crimes and trafficking are the marks left by the Camorra, the Neapolitan Mafia, that is the chief employer in the city.
From creating small illegal jobs, like car-park guardians who park scooters for a few euros and work as Mafia informers, to the profitable market in waste disposal, the Mafia has managed to exert its influence over the entirety of the Neapolitan economy. Some of the locals are striking back, others learn to live with it. Take for instance the “neomoldici”, popular singers who are often mere children. The nemoodici can earn up to 100 000 euros a just by singing the Camorra’s praises.
To try and diminish the Mafia empire in the city, Naples has set up its own special police force: ‘les Falchi’, the falcons. Equipped with powerful motorbikes, and no helmet nor uniform, they drive at breakneck speed through the labyrinth of Neapolitan streets. What are their techniques for infiltrating the clans? Spy cameras, hidden microphones… discover how they lay a trap for whole districts in order to crush a cocaine trafficking network organised by the mums of the Naples mafia.
After the arrests of the Mafia godfathers, Italy hoped that it had put an end to organized crime. Instead, a new generation of mobsters has emerged.
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Decades of illegal dumping haven’t just poisoned the land and water. Child cancer rates are unusually high and the air is toxic.
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Number one in the cocaine market, the Ndrangheta is the most powerful branch of the Italian mafia. Their members are enrolled young into this huge organization, seen as a family to whom you owe loyalty.
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