The point of convergence of the suspects from Dugny (Seine-Saint-Denis) is their taste for the hip-hop universe and a rap group around which they gravitate and find themselves.
Seventeen people, including fourteen adolescents aged 15 to 17, have been arrested over the past two days and taken into police custody.
All are suspected of having participated in a series of thefts carried out in assembly, with violence or at the threat of a weapon.
About fifteen assaults were recorded in the space of a year by the police from the La Courneuve police station.
The first cases identified date back to deconfinement in May 2020 and target young people who were walking in the Georges-Valbon departmental park, in La Courneuve.
Struck with bare hands, but also with a baseball bat, the victims were then stripped.
They all have in common that they do not live in the area where their attackers live.
Victim tied with scotch tape to chair for clip
For the police officers, the acts of increasing violence are akin to brawls between gangs.
One fact that takes place in June 2020 catches their attention in particular.
A secondary school student in Dugny but living elsewhere finds himself the victim of a short but agonizing sequestration: he is tied with tape on a chair and filmed for a clip, in a city of Dugny.
In passing, he was beaten and also had his personal belongings stolen.
Nine new assaults were subsequently committed in the same town, but this time according to a different modus operandi: the victims are attracted by classified ads for the sale of phones, scooters ... posted on Leboncoin or Snapchat.
The buyers are then greeted in Dugny by the seller who is no other than a tout. The latter sends them to a group of accomplices who beat up and threaten their target with a knife. One of them was stabbed. If the overall damage caused by thefts only amounts to around 5,000 euros, it is above all the level of violence generated by the group effect that alerted the investigators in this case.
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