Antoine Valentin is mayor of Saint-Jeoire (Haute-Savoie) and an executive in the private sector.
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Mr. Mayor, do you know the snapchat account“ enfumette74
”?
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It's a dealer who delivers for free in the town, after 6 pm there is even a supplement of € 5
”, an inhabitant throws me with an air of annoyance, on the square of the town hall.
Enough to corroborate the latest figures from the statistical service of the Ministry of the Interior (SSMI), revealed by Le Figaro, showing an explosion in acts of delinquency and violence in rural areas.
From the start of my mandate as mayor, I understood that local insecurity and political powerlessness would henceforth be my working hypotheses.
Like my locally elected colleagues from rural and peripheral France, I witness, despite myself, the total disintegration of the security and judicial system.
"In my town, everyone knows the dealers, they work with complete impunity"
Thus, in my town, everyone knows the dealers, they work with complete impunity.
Multiple convicts, they are rarely imprisoned.
When by a miracle they leave the benches of the commune to join those of the detention center, an adjustment of sentence generally makes them quickly find the fold.
Without embarrassment, they are the owners of the most beautiful SUVs in the industry, well ahead of the doctor or the local entrepreneur.
The gendarmes, understaffed, are struggling to dismantle the networks.
When by an incredible amount of work, they succeed, the sentences are so weak that they do not discourage anyone, except perhaps the investigators themselves.
"Delinquency and violence are exploding by 8% this year in our small towns and villages."
In France, our public policies often boil down to undressing Pierre in order to dress Paul.
Pierre is all the more easy to undress, as he is silent and needy, so as to better endow the noisy, vindictive and very urban Paul.
This is exactly the situation of the police and gendarmerie services.
Resources are withdrawn in rural areas to be reallocated in urban areas.
In this context, delinquency and violence explode by 8% this year in our small towns and villages.
Conversely, they fell by 10% in Paris and 5% in Seine-Saint-Denis.
Nature abhors a vacuum, violence and delinquency too.
By a policy of petty accountant, our leaders have created safe deserts, which are in reality only oases of crime.
To read also:
"Delinquency in the countryside tilts France into a new insecurity"
It is therefore logical that we are seeing new populations arriving, leaving urban areas, to come and flourish their criminal activities in our villages devoid of law enforcement.
Contaminating thereby the weakest and most fragile of our fellow citizens, already badly damaged by the economic context.
In my village, the gendarmerie brigade, thanks to a mutualisation plan with that of a neighboring municipality, no longer welcomes the public.
The citizens must now take their vehicles, to travel several kilometers, if they wish to file a complaint.
As a result, a good number of rural people abandon any attempt to have the facts of which they have been victims administratively recorded.
The statistical increase, already exponential, in the figures of delinquency and violence in the gendarmerie zone is therefore to be compensated for by a non-negligible amount of facts passed under the radar.
Not only are fewer and fewer in our municipalities, the gendarmes have to face an increase in violence against them, which also jumped this year by 8%.
All of this within ever wider scope of action.
"The puny and diminishing means of our villages must remedy the assumed disengagement of the State".
Our small towns are not only deprived, they are sacrificed on the altar of city politics.
To pour billions into urban areas, the executive is draining the budgets of our villages through the equalization fund.
For my village alone, it is arbitrary that 65,000 € are cut from our limited means each year.
As this puncture is not enough, we must also take in hand and therefore our financial burden, the security of goods and people.
New in rural areas, in order to ensure minimum service, we must invest at great expense in video protection cameras, additional municipal police officers and protective equipment for our agents.
The puny and diminishing means of our villages must remedy the assumed disengagement of the State.
Read also:
Car fires, violence, burglaries: when insecurity wins the countryside
As a result, the gap is widening every day between the France of cities and that of the fields. The explosion of delinquency in the gendarmerie zone, when at the same time, it recedes in the police zone, is a crying indicator of the abandonment of part of the territory. Half of the French live in rural or peripheral areas. How long will public policy continue to sacrifice them? If posturing on social networks and demonstrations are not the means of communication of the French in the territories, the dull and justified anger is nevertheless very present. I see it every day in contact with my fellow citizens, in my modest town hall. What is the executive waiting for to hear the cries of warnings from local elected officials and the muffled rumble of the campaign? He must act quickly, before suffering, one day soon, the wrath.
