Crime in Italian town: from "just about zero" to daily occurence

I live in a city with 160,000 people, a medieval hilltown in Italy. The crime rate used to be, as a professor here once said "Just about zero", and it was true. Now local crimes are drug and alcohol related, killings, robbery, hit and run drivers,rape, prostitution, knivings. Every single day someone is murdered in Italy, and our little town has become one of the top meeting places for drug dealings.
For me, growing up in California, any political problem of the world was so far away!! - I had no interest and from my naive point of view, "What does this stuff have to do with ME?" attitude.
Now, between the local news, Italy's news, and the world's violent events, I just cannot easily relate to the immensity of it all - and being a person who likes to see the problem and then list ways to solve it, I can barely immagine just where does one begin?!
I am not informed enough, do my best to become moreso, but try in my way (naive I admit) to find some solutions to world problems. It's a small small way, but it is the one that comes easiest to me.
I try to take for example the Gaza problem and shrink it into a personal example that I can more easily relate to.
I think, if I had two groups in my house that were tearing the house apart, and fighting, and there were injured people, and there was no solution in mind, what would I personally be able to do about it.
In this way, I can relate. I can come up with some easier solutions - take care of the injured, and then separate the two groups to talk it out. But all I know, the talking and understanding would be the only real way to start solving the problem. In any problem, it is the only way.
Now that our little "peaceful" town here in Italy has beome infested with every kind of crime possible, husbands killing their wives, young mothers throwing newborns away, I don't know anymore where one can begin: at home? Local government? I used to feel I had the power, more power to solve something, anything, but now.....where does one
begin? In Italian they say "Imbarazzo della scelta" (the choice is embarassing, or there is so much to chose from) regarding how many crimes there are....where CAN one start?