Guardian
August 3, 2011
Not far from the faceless building that houses Athens city hall, a banner flaps in the wind. For those driving up Sofokleous street, it is difficult to miss. "No to drugs and prostitution", the hand-painted sheet proclaims. "No more tolerance".
Shopkeepers say the banner was erected before Giorgos Kaminis, the city's soft-spoken mayor, took up the post in January. But it is hard not to see that, since then, the vices have got worse: a little further up the road Somalian prostitutes proposition pedestrians at all hours; a little further down, past beggars who cry "I'm hungry", young men crouch in doorways doubled over with needles in hand.
"Where to begin?" asks Kaminis, sitting back in a low leather chair in his sparse sixth-floor office. "There is a flagrant lack of respect for the law, be it prostitution, human trafficking, drug dealing or organised crime. Some 7,000 addicts are on waiting lists for hospital care. Around Patission [a central avenue] there are areas that are so lawless you cannot even go after 6pm."
Kaminis would know. Unlike his conservative predecessors, who ran affairs from a decorative building in the heart of the capital, the French-trained lawyer has set up office in the drab surroundings of an Orwellian behemoth, built to house the municipality's administration in the 1960s. The view from his desk is not of the Acropolis but a cluster of antennae-covered concrete roofs.
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