Video protection or police officers on foot, "shelling" or "islanding"?
After a pass of arms with the city of Marseille around surveillance cameras, Gérald Darmanin comes Thursday to bring state aid to the Marseille city, plagued by drug networks.
The minister, who will also visit Rognac and Arles on Friday, intends to show that he is "
attentive to the situation in Marseille
", his entourage told AFP, stressing "
the very important effort
" of the government, with 300 police officers as reinforcements, "in
order to step up the fight against trafficking
".
The tension had risen a week ago with the new left-wing municipality, after the minister accused him of having "
refused
" the money he was offering for video protection.
"
Until proven otherwise, a camera has never arrested any thief, much less drug trafficking,
" retorted Yannick Ohanessian, the security assistant.
A few hours after his statement on RTL radio, the minister revealed via Twitter this arrival of 300 new police officers, "
including 100 in 2021
".
An announcement welcomed by the mayor of Marseille, Benoît Payan: “
It's already good!
I prefer a minister who helps Marseille rather than a filmmaker,
”he told the regional daily
La Provence
on Saturday
.
Beyond these additional staff, it is the strategy to fight against delinquency, and in particular drug trafficking, which should be discussed between the elected officials of Marseille and the minister.
"
The real question, in Marseille, is the crime linked to narcotics, to this trafficking which is becoming more professional, which becomes more violent again, as in the 1980s, and whose participants are getting younger
", explained to AFP Jean- Baptiste Perrier, director of the institute of penal sciences and criminology at the University of Aix-Marseille.
According to the latest police figures, revealed on Wednesday by
La Provence
, Marseille would have 156 "stups plans", some of which would welcome up to 2,000 customers per day, for daily income of 80,000 euros.
Faced with this phenomenon, which is rotting the daily life of the inhabitants of these neighborhoods, the new municipality does not rely on video.
"
Today, a camera, in a city, it has a lifespan of ten minutes
", assures the assistant to security.
“
I prefer to hire police officers,
” confirms Benoît Payan.
"Shouting lack" of police personnel
Yannick Ohanessian, on the other hand, denounces a "
glaring lack
" of police personnel, with "barely six BAC (anti-crime brigades) crews at night": "Over the last three years, we have lost 200 to 300 national police officers on the public highway. ".
Marseille is committed to recruiting 100 municipal police officers, in addition to the 421 already in place.
Objective: to strengthen the municipal night police, "
very insufficient
", and ensure "
more islanding missions, to cover the entire territory
".
A challenge, in a city twice the size of Paris.
During his visit on Thursday in the 15th arrondissement police station, in the popular and underprivileged neighborhoods of the north of the city, the most affected by drug trafficking, Gérald Darmanin should return to the "
global approach
", a strategy adopted at the end of 2012 associating enhanced cooperation between all State services - police, customs, tax authorities, etc.
- facing traffickers and interventions on housing, town planning and social issues.
“
This proactive approach
” has had results in terms of settling scores, which has fallen sharply in the department, with only 12 deaths in 2020 against 29 in 2016, “
a high for 30 years
”, congratulated AFP the head of the judicial police in the southern zone Eric Arella.
In a recent press release, the prefect of police of Bouches-du-Rhône, Frédérique Camilleri, she praised a "
complementary
", "
more offensive and visible
" method, that of "
shelling
": punch operations, on points of sales, at the most lucrative hours.
But police action will not be enough, notes Jean-Baptiste Perrier, director of the Institute of Penal Sciences and Criminology at the University of Aix-Marseille: “
What is tragic is that for a young person, in these cities, success is much easier in the drug network than in normal life
”.