Outsourced drug dealing: Cisternina becomes a market place for external pushers

The Cisternina district in Castello di Cisterna, once a residential neighborhood, is now infamous as one of the main centers of drug dealing in the area.

Constant pressure from law enforcement agencies, engaged in ongoing counter-terrorism operations, is reportedly pushing local criminal organizations to resort to a new strategy: outsourcing drug trafficking.

Increasingly, in fact, the drug dealers arrested on the streets of Cisternina are no longer residents of the neighborhood, let alone the municipality of Castello di Cisterna. They are individuals from neighboring municipalities, veritable "on-call workers" who are sent to the neighborhood to sell drugs and then quickly replaced.

This new dynamic is transforming Cisternina into a sort of marketplace for drug dealing, where criminal organizations can easily recruit new pushers, thus avoiding exposing their direct affiliates to the risk of being arrested.

The recent operations that led to the arrests of Oreste Merola, a 21-year-old from Acerra, and Marco Ciriaco, a 38-year-old from Mugnano del Cardinale, confirm this. Both were found in possession of several doses of narcotics and cash and were arrested on charges of possession with intent to distribute.

These cases highlight how the phenomenon of outsourcing is profoundly changing the face of crime in the neighborhood, making it increasingly difficult for law enforcement to trace the leaders of criminal organizations.