Municipal: has the city of Paris become dangerous?

Every day, as part of the municipal elections, Le Parisien scrutinizes a candidate's declaration.

Gantzer's statement

In a video posted on Twitter in mid-January, Gaspard Gantzer, candidate for mayor of Paris at the head of the list "Parisiennes, Parisiens", is alarmed by the increase in insecurity in Paris "for two years" .

"The figures are unfortunately eloquent: Paris is becoming a dangerous city," says the former spokesperson for Bertrand Delanoë and former communications manager for François Hollande at the Elysée Palace. Citing the burglaries that “exploded in Paris”, the brawls, “the deal places” in Stalingrad, La Chapelle, Balard and Porte de Vanves, he is also alarmed by the attacks against women who “have increased by more than 25 % Last year ".

Burglaries, assaults, harassment, drug trafficking, brawls between gangs, insecurity is increasing in Paris. Our proposals to restore order and security in our city 🔽 pic.twitter.com/dtirNqPBFb

Official figures: a steady rise

A few days ago, on France Inter, the mayor PS Anne Hidalgo underlined the “problem of extremely important increase of insecurity, in particular road, pickpocketing in the subway, burglaries”, adding that this comes under the "national police".

Crimes that require a certain skill, such as car theft or bank robbery, have stagnated or decreased, especially since 2016, the year of the standardization of statistical methods.

The delinquency was oriented towards rapid actions, snatching at the head, where the booty generally made up of expensive smartphones is immediately resold at a good price. "This tsunami of pickpocketing is driving everything upwards," explains Valérie Martineau, head of the proximity security directorate for the Paris agglomeration (DSPAP). That Paris is a game-rich territory has not escaped anyone's attention, ”she notes. And the tourist districts are a hunting ground of choice for pickpockets.

If you look closely at the figures for the base of crimes and misdemeanors recorded by the police and the gendarmerie since 2015, you can see a striking difference between Paris and France on thefts and burglaries.

"We do not deny the reality of the figures, but there are Parisian specificities, in particular the growing share of foreign authors in the facts observed (48% last year in Paris against less than 20% outside of Ile-de -France), the growing share of unaccompanied minors, and in certain districts a fixing of low cost delinquency due to pockets of great misery, "summarizes Valérie Martineau.

An observation to qualify

For Laurent Mucchielli, sociologist specializing in security issues, director of research at the CNRS, the tip of the iceberg does not draw the block of ice. "The statistics are not a direct record of reality, but are the result of the work of the police," said the researcher.

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"Today's society is no more sexually violent than it was twenty years ago, for example, but since the 1980s, victims have expressed more about their experiences. It had calmed down a bit, then the MeeTo phenomenon arrived, in October 2017, and once again the people undergoing sexual violence were carried along by a momentum which led them to express themselves more. ” At the same time, the mobilization against violence against women has led the Interior Ministry to systematically account for violence, even in the absence of a complaint.

Conversely, drug offenses are going down. Not that the drug market has shrunk, or that there are fewer customers. But "the many arrests during the multiple demonstrations, every Saturday in 2019 (Editor's note: the yellow vest rallies) , have hampered the availability of the judicial teams" on the front of drug trafficking, recognizes Valérie Martineau. "And with the setting up of the daily police, we have endeavored to combat the traffic that rots the lives of the inhabitants," she continues.

Victimization survey, indicator of danger

Since 2001, the Île-de-France region has funded a vast victimization survey. Every two years, 10,500 people are interviewed by statisticians from the Institute of Planning and Town Planning on the attacks they have been victims of, and their feeling of insecurity. The 2017 study, published last spring and to be read here, shows that 12.5% ​​of Parisians say they have been attacked in 2014, 2015, and 2016 (8.2% on average in Ile-de-France). But 91.4% find their neighborhood safe and 94.1% find it pleasant to live in. In Seine-Saint-Denis, they are 79.1% - the lowest figure in the region - but unchanged since 2015. This finding does not point in the direction of a city becoming dangerous, in any case not these last years. "The results of the last survey, conducted in early 2019, are in use and will be made public in April," said Hélène Heurtel, co-author of the survey.

Who manages security in Paris?

The Paris police headquarters regulates the internal security of Paris and the three departments of the inner suburbs (Hauts-de-Seine, Seine-Saint-Denis and Val-de-Marne), i.e. 6.4 million inhabitants, thus than the airports of Roissy, Orly and Le Bourget.

The city is responsible since a law of February 2017 for the traffic and parking police on a whole list of streets and axes, with the exception of the ring road and axes along the Seine. 1,600 agents of the prefecture have passed, under this law, under the supervision of the town hall. The respective competences of each "remain inextricably linked and the law of 2017 still did not allow to dissociate their exercise, nor to clarify their implementation", notes the Court of Auditors in a report made last month.

This same report noted a notable drop in staff in nine years: in Paris, in September 2009, there were 51 police officers per 10,000 inhabitants, against 38 in March 2018. Similarly, for the DTSP alone, the Territorial Directorate of Security of proximity, in 2018, 273 police officers were on the ground at the same time, compared to 439 in 2014.

There is currently no municipal police in Paris. Anne Hidalgo was always opposed to it, before changing her mind last year. The amendment which was to allow its creation was rejected at the Assembly last November. The examination of a new text cannot take place before the municipal elections.

And elsewhere ?

Each year, a Mexican association, the Citizen Council for Public Security and Criminal Justice, ranks the 50 most dangerous cities with more than 300,000 inhabitants. The study is based solely on the number of homicides reported to the population. 42 of these 50 cities are in Latin America. In Irapuato, Mexico, the homicide rate in 2018 was 81.44 per 100,000 population. In comparison, the Ile-de-France region recorded a homicide rate of 1.3 per 100,000 that year, 62 times less than in Irapuato.

In summary

The figures show a clear increase in certain crimes, to a much greater extent than what is observed in the rest of France. But the feeling of the population remains positive: according to the regional study carried out for the Ile-de-France region, an overwhelming majority of Parisians find their environment safe and pleasant to live in.