Hi, my husband and I just came back from Florence. On our last day, we were fined by ATAF because we had not signed our Firenzecards and had used these for our travel. We were given no option to pay within x days and were physically escorted to an ATM to take out the cash and we paid on the spot. I am fine paying for what was essentially our mistake but what hurts is the way that we were treated. They were verbally aggressive, threatened getting us arrested if we didn't pay there and then, physically grabbed my arm (which is definitely not ok), literally gave no options except pay now or get arrested. I said I would prefer if they call the police which they didn't do but instead kept pressuring us to just go straight to the ATM. From my research on Google, my experience is not that uncommon. So my question is, what is there to verify that an ATAF officer is 'official?
They wear plain clothes which I totally understand and when I asked to see their IDs, the ID they showed me was completely white with their picture and name (not very official looking). No logo and no other badge. I asked for more in the way of a badge but they only displayed their italian 'citation' book that they wrote in and said that their white ID card was their main ID. The citation book also provided us with the duplicate 'receipt' following our payment.
For my understanding and peace of mind, what does an official ATAF badge look like? What should they show us to show that they are indeed official?