Punch operation ? Or "com" operation? This Wednesday late afternoon Didier Lallement, the prefect of police, offered himself what the prefecture of police modestly called an operation of "desire for visibility".
Mission? "Take back the public space," hammered the prefect. Undermining and controlling the street vendors who squatted the sidewalks of the Barbès district (18th century) engaged in cigarette trafficking and other sales with impunity. And in the end, provide respite to residents and "real" overdue traders. And the beginning of an answer. "There are operations every day in this neighborhood," said a police officer. The prefect's idea is to go back to the underground economy because the sellers are obviously small hands ”.
For its operation, the prefect deployed no less than one hundred and twenty-two police officers, in uniform and in civilian clothes, in Paris - Barbes and Gare du Nord, but also in the inner suburbs, in the Hauts-de-Seine, at the Châtillon metro- Montrouge, in Seine-Saint-Denis, in Saint-Denis and in Val-de-Marne, in Choisy-le-Roi. And summoned the press.
Reports for buyers
In Barbès, his arrival in official dress with his golden cap did not go unnoticed ... Nor did the cordon of police who surrounded him. "Now," he said, "we have the ability to issue tickets of 135 euros to buyers of fraudulent cigarettes. And this since December 20 ”.
An association head of the Goutte d'Or who knows the area like a pocket, sneaks laughingly: "The Sauvettes spotted that there was something going on. We saw them all being called and cursing each other in Arabic. In a few minutes, they had flown away like a cloud of sparrows, the tampered bags of Malboro, the makeshift trestles and the missing crates ”.
"We weren't fooled," says a policeman, "on the fact that we wouldn't have everyone". Nevertheless ... At the Barbès metro, before the prefect's arrival, around thirty uniformed and plainclothes police officers appeared and succeeded in "squeezing" little people, many of them undocumented.
46 arrests
In one hour, between Paris and the three departments, the police made 46 arrests. Among those arrested, there was one concealer of theft and seven illegal aliens.
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At the Bar Tabac Des Postes, rue Clignancourt (18th century), the tobacconist does not shout cocorico ... "It's too little! ". However, the trader salutes the work of the field police: “They do what they can. They are present. The problem is that when they arrest someone in the morning, in the afternoon, they come back! ”According to the tobacconist, the best solution would be European harmonization of cigarette prices. “Only that can kill the unfair competition from street vendors. "
