By Richard Diamond/Staff Reports

Italian authorities launched an unprecedented dragnet to capture Fleximan, the anti-speed camera vigilante who captured the imagination of millions of the country's drivers. Police raided the home of Enrico Mantoan, a 42-year-old metalworker from Padua with the intention of charging him with the destruction of five automated ticketing machines with an angle grinder. Police have already begun leaking information from the man's social media messages to turn the public against him. Simone Pillon, a prominent former Italian senator, came to his defense.

"On the left they beatify people accused of assault and causing injury," Pillon tweeted. "They redefine a murderer as a 'poet' and 'pacifist,' but then they take it out on Fleximan. Can I say that I like Enrico Mantoan very much, or, is he an excuse for crime? I'd like to shake his hand. Legend."

It is unclear whether Fleximan's defenders will retaliate with a "Free Fleximan" campaign against the photo radar devices. In Santarcangelo di Romagna, an unidentified vigilante cut down the "Velo OK" speed camera on Via Savina around Sunday, May 12.

French officials will have a hard time reactivating the speed camera that farmers in the Drome department blocked on Saturday, May 11. Activists with the Drome Rural Coordination placed fifteen bales of hay around the automated ticketing machine on the RD538 to protest government policies. The new barricade weighs about six-and-a-half tons.

In the Tarn department, fellow farmers belonging to the Tarn Rural Coordination wrapped the photo radar devices on the Albi ring road with black or yellow plastic.

Less than a day passed before the speed camera on the RD984d in Montreal-la-Cluse was blinded with green spraypaint on Monday, May 13. On the prior day, the speed camera on the RD955 near Berd'huis was wrapped in a dense foam material. Red paint was used in Taintrux. Green spraypaint appeared again in Allonne, blinding the speed camera on the RD927 on Saturday, May 11.