Impacts of bullets on building facades, fronts of bars or mini markets… The walls of cities still bear the scars of the deadly shootings that took place this summer, all over France.
Most often at night, or early in the morning, but sometimes in broad daylight, in the middle of the inhabitants, as on May 11 in the district of Saint-Musse, in Toulon (Var), where two hooded and gloved men rushed into the crowd, armed with assault rifles, at the time of the grill and children's games.
Similar scenes of fear took place in Nice, Montpellier, Nîmes, Grenoble, Dijon, Caen, Rennes… On the night of Monday to Tuesday again, two young people aged 17 and 25 were killed at 7.65 in a cellar in Saint- Ouen (Seine-Saint-Denis), one hit in the throat, the other in the chest.
"They shot in the cellar, then in the hall, there was blood everywhere," said a building guard still in shock.
The phenomenon is not new, and it is even recurring.
"It's the new western" sang, in 1994, the rapper MC Solar.
The springs are known: territorial or clan wars, sometimes splits even within the teams, against a background of drug trafficking, exacerbated in recent months by confinement.
80% of the facts concern disputes between drug traffickers, and the sinews of war is money.
The Covid pandemic would have intensified the conflicts caused by the rise in drug prices and the release of certain traffickers in the health context.
"This provoked putschs which might not have taken place or accelerated certain recompositions", analyzes a magistrate, specializing in organized crime.
However, it is difficult to say that there have been more shootings than usual.
In fact, this box does not exist in the crime statistics of the national police.
Only the settling of scores linked to organized crime and homicides or attempted homicides between offenders are taken into account.
Which represents - the two categories combined -: 304 facts since the beginning of the year, until August 31, against 287 in 2019, at the same period.
A figure in slight increase.
With a black part: that of shootings without real human damage.
In medium-sized cities too
“The notion of settling scores distorts the debate a little, the phenomenon of shootings is broader and more complex to apprehend, because we also shoot to intimidate, notes Jean-Philippe Fougereau, the director of the regional judicial police service of Montpellier (Hérault ), which has seen a sharp increase in shootings and assaults with firearms in its sector.
Since the start of the year, six incidents have taken place in Montpellier and 12 in Nîmes (Gard), with several deaths.
"What the general public retains are the shootings, because when you are awakened by the fire of weapons of war, it is shocking", adds this great cop.
In the outskirts of medium-sized provincial towns, new bosses have moved into drug trafficking and no longer hesitate to use the methods of the big thugs.
"We are more faced with an expansion of the scope of settling accounts than an increase," explains Alain Bauer, criminologist at the National Conservatory of Arts and Crafts.
There is a war of succession which is spreading everywhere because many big bosses have realized, by increasing in power, that they are collecting only the crumbs of the market.
"
"Younger and younger traffickers who have access to weapons"
The sources of rivalry are many and multiple.
He is a trafficker who wants to appropriate the territory of another, a lieutenant who wants to emancipate himself by taking the place of his boss, a wholesaler who steals the goods of another ... The imprisonment or the release of Caids can also act as a trigger for extreme violence.
"Today, there is an acceleration of cycles, with increasingly young traffickers, and often inexperienced who have access to weapons" continues Alain Bauer.
Thus, machine guns or Kalashnikovs are regularly discovered during searches linked to drug trafficking.
Newsletter - Most of the news
Every morning, the news seen by Le Parisien
I'm registering
Your email address is collected by Le Parisien to enable you to receive our news and commercial offers.
Learn more
"The traffickers of small peripheral towns are obliged to arm themselves to defend themselves against the big ones established in the large urban centers, and sometimes even to compete with them", confirms a gendarmerie officer who notes a "decentralization of these facts in peri-urban zone" .
Thus on August 16, in Annonay, a town in the Ardèche region of 16,000 inhabitants, hooded individuals shot a group of young people with a hunting rifle for a simple debt of drugs ...
READ ALSO>
Seven shootings since the end of June: Grenoble undermined by the settling of scores
"Fifteen years ago, the thugs considered that there was a kind of progression in the thug, based on experience and technicality, which went hand in hand with maturity in age", analyzes the commissioner general Jean- Philippe Foujereau. “Today, we have totally unstructured 18-year-old guys who want to take the place of those 30 years old, and who don't hesitate to take up arms to achieve their ends. »What sometimes manifests itself with a tragic lack of control ...