I was fined €400 while running near my home

Life in quarantine is difficult. From May 4th one can see their loved ones, but many travel restrictions will remain.

In this period, I never went out even to go grocery shopping. I worked from home, exercised at home, since about mid-March, the last time I went out for a run in the neighborhood of the town where I live.

Since that day, after a heated discussion on my Facebook profile, and then another one a few days later, I significantly reduced movements even to do some physical activity. I used some apps to track HIIT workouts, functional training, I tried a bit of everything.

But I still wasn’t moving enough. My Apple Watch reminded me every day that I barely managed to stand for at least 1 minute every hour over 12 hours, and that I almost never reached the exercise goal of 30 minutes, nor the movement goal, which until a few weeks ago was 490 calories burned per day and now is 390 - an automatic change by the Apple Watch to adapt the goals to my less active life.

I don’t have a treadmill, and honestly I can’t afford one just to use it during the quarantine period. I can only run.

I started running, from early April, in the avenue under my building: effectively the private street which is therefore still considered my home. On April 10, I started reading about the new decree of the President of the Council, which responded precisely to the discussions raised on social media and on the web regarding restrictions on physical activity. Doubtful however of the possible ambiguities, I consulted the government website which also included a series of frequently asked questions and answers, and which is still consultable at this link. Since I am not a labor lawyer, I do not believe I have to read the provisions directly from the Official Gazette but, like a common citizen, I can take advantage of a simplified service that clarifies points that, as a law, I might not be able to fully understand.

Having established that, from what was written on the official Government website, I could have run albeit in the vicinity of my home, I then started running again, making a route as varied as possible, but always with a maximum distance of 200 meters from my building.

I ran a lot: just in the last week I recovered a lot, running almost 20 km in 3 days. I finally felt good: running at the end of the day, I released the tension of the working day, reduced the toxin levels of my body and stopped having those strange nightmares that I had often (one night I dreamed that the Tower of Pisa fell on my head), and that I discovered to be a consequence of staying at home for too long without going out.

Saturday, May 2, around 19:00, I went out for my usual run, having now got into the rhythm. I go around the block - practically returning to the back of my own building, and I stretch to the parking lot of the shopping center next door, which at 19:00 is empty because it is all closed. Just before entering the parking lot, I find a municipal police car stopping in front of me. I take off my headphones and hear that the officers are angry precisely with me, asking me why I was around, that I shouldn’t be around running, that it was obvious that I was running because I was in shorts and with headphones. I respond promptly: I learned the lesson, I must respect the rules after reading them carefully. “Yes, I am running, but I live less than 200 meters from here, I live in that building, see?”, pointing to my building. “Until tomorrow [May 3] you can’t run, it’s forbidden, don’t you know the law?” I remember these words very well, because they were the ones that made me snap. There were two officers, and while she reminds me of the law, he gets out of the car and lunges at me, shouting “You are making me nervous, you can’t run, it’s forbidden!”. I might be paraphrasing a few words, but the tone was definitely that.

I continue, convinced of my reasons, that I can run if I am near my home. “Yes, but who knows where you would have gone if we hadn’t stopped you”, she says. They couldn’t know if I would have stayed near my home, but they couldn’t know if I would have gone further either. As proof of where I would have gone, the entire list of my runs is consultable on my Strava profile, and from there you can see how I, for about 3 weeks, have done roughly always the same route.

They ask me for my details, I provide them. In the meantime, the two of them stop other people: to some they anticipate that a sanction will be issued, others they let go saying that everything is fine.

They ask me for the document, but I don’t have it because I am near home, I don’t carry documents. I go get documents and pen at home, and I fill out the self-certification in front of them. They tell me that I don’t know the law, and they show me a sheet reporting (but I discovered this later) the Circular of the Ministry of the Interior of March 31, 2020, which integrates the provisions of the Law Decree 19/2020. In the report they will then write that I am violating the provisions of that circular.

She fills out the report - it takes a lot of time, 15 minutes or a little more. In the meantime, obviously, I am still in shorts and the wind is blowing. To warm up I walk up and down for about ten meters.

Report filled out, she makes me sign and they sign too. I leave. It is a fine of €400 which, if paid within 30 days, drops to €280.

I return home, I consult everything. I open dozens of tabs simultaneously, and in the meantime I start writing a PEC (Certified Email) to the Municipal Police, because I noticed some errors:

• The date is wrong: it is written that the report is dated May 1 and the transgression occurred on May 1, when in reality both should have referred to May 2. I didn’t notice it at the moment because I wear contact lenses or glasses, and at that moment I only had sunglasses;

• In the description of the violation, it is reported (I quote verbatim): carried out jogging activity prohibited as per recalled provision: ordinance of the ministry of the interior of 31/03/2020 integrating d.l. 19/2020, when in reality it is not written anywhere that refers to the aforementioned d.l., and in addition the paragraph that was shown to me, and that I am violating, refers to a completely different provision, namely the D.P.C.M. of March 9, 2020. Moreover, the syntax and understanding of this text remain questionable;

I start doing research because damn, I was sure I was on the right side: I was doing exactly what was allowed to me, nothing more. I live in Lazio, and I had already checked that there were no additional ordinances, even in my Municipality, that modified the provisions reported by the government.

I proceed backwards: in the report reference is made, as mentioned, to the circular of March 31. This circular is also intended for Police Commanders: it is an indication regarding how to enforce rules. Something doesn’t add up, and so I remember the decree of April 10. I reread it, and paragraph 1.f of Article 1 states: it is not allowed to carry out playful or recreational activity outdoors; it is allowed to carry out individually physical activity in the vicinity of one’s home, provided however in compliance with the distance of at least one meter from any other person.

This means that physical activity is allowed. But then I remember the circular that was shown to me by the police officer: maybe in some way it explicates some reference.

And in fact it is so: [..] it remains not allowed to carry out playful or recreational activity outdoors and access parks, […] it is highlighted that the generally allowed physical activity should not be understood as equivalent to sporting activity (jogging), also taking into account that the current provision referred to in art. 1 of the decree of the President of the Council of Ministers of March 9 last keeps the two hypotheses distinct, being able to include in the first, as already mentioned, walking in the vicinity of one’s home. This paragraph refers to a decree that is no longer valid, since the decree of April 10 effectively cancels all the provisions of the previous decrees. In general then, even if reference were made to the Law Decree 19/2020 (which has a stronger legal and executive value than the DPCM), this allows physical activity always near one’s home, since paragraph 2.n mentions the limitation or suspension of playful, recreational, sporting and motor activities carried out outdoors or in places open to the public, without specifying nothing and thus leaving room for broad interpretation.

In conclusion: I am probably right, but being right does me no good. I felt genuinely attacked by people who should represent safety for me as a citizen, and instead they only transmitted fear, uncertainty and vagueness. The sanction will probably be annulled even just for the wrong date, or for the wrong reference to a law that has been overwritten by new provisions. I will appeal starting from May 16 to the Prefecture of Rome, and I will wait up to 5 years for the answer. It also seems that, before this, since it is not a real fine, I will have to wait 90 days for confirmation from the Prefect, but I am not sure about this.

This situation, however, testifies to a strong gap in the propagation of information, already highlighted elsewhere, which especially in this moment remains critical and extremely relevant: the Police operators referred only and exclusively to the provisions given to them, even if dated, without citing any other provision, even just informal, provided by the government.

It was 7 in the evening, they were probably tired, they had a family at home waiting for them after an exhausting day of work. Maybe I was grumpy - and anyway, they were giving me a fine of 400 euros, I couldn’t really be happy. But in a period like this where laws are a tool too slow (by nature) to keep up with the progress of contagion and quarantine, I believe we should all be more supportive of each other, and rather follow the last paragraph of the now famous Circular of the Ministry of the Interior of March 31, 2020: the search for a fair balance between careful vigilance on the correct observance of the measures in question and the reasonable verification of individual cases. Trusting in the usual collaboration and thanking you.

Buy me a coffee @ home