“Act faster and better”;
"To fight relentlessly": it is by these few formulas sown here and there in front of the cameras and in front of the police officers that the Prime Minister, Jean Castex, punctuated his trip to Saint-Denis this Friday morning.
Before the presentation of Act II of his anti-narcotics plan, the head of government wanted to take his Interior Minister Gérald Darmanin and the Minister of the Seals, Éric Dupond-Moretti, to this town of Seine-Saint-Denis strongly marked by drug trafficking.
Shortly after 8 am, Jean Castex visited and inaugurated the new police station, with a stopover in the urban supervision center which had been open for a month and which shows 300 infringements per day by video surveillance.
"Is it useful in the specific fight against drug trafficking?"
»Asked the Prime Minister to Commissioner Anouck Fourmigué.
"Yes, when they are positioned in the right places, it can allow us to set up discreet surveillance, to identify people", she replied, specifying that windows of apartments loaned by donors could also be used "a few days or a few hours", for certain surveys.
"Harassment pays"
Ninety cameras are currently installed in Saint-Denis: "We will deploy between 70 and 90 per year to reach a threshold of 400 cameras on the scale of the city", specified the mayor (PS) Mathieu Hanotin, who also announced to the Prime Minister that he would inaugurate, this Friday evening, a "dog squad" dedicated in particular to this fight, with three agents and four dogs, one of which will be able to carry out missions for both the national police and municipal.
Establishment of republican reconquest districts (QRR), recruitment of judicial police officers ... The head of government wanted to "take stock of the actions taken" against trafficking.
At the police station, he attended a review of the action carried out in the QRRs: Seine-Saint-Denis has twelve, including the northern districts of Saint-Denis.
The commissioner highlighted the dismantling of a major point of deal in the Jacques-Duclos city, where heroin and cannabis were sold: “There has been no traffic for over a year.
The police were relentlessly arresting and taking them into custody every day and it bore fruit.
This is a significant step forward.
Dismantling is not a snap, but harassment pays.
"
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Out of the police station, Jean Castex went to meet field police in two neighborhoods: first Gabriel-Péri, where in 2019 parents of students had set up a human chain every day to symbolically protect a school from trafficking. .
Then the Salvador-Allende city.
"Faced with trafficking, we need material and human resources," insisted the head of government.
Things are unfolding in a significant way and we will continue: we must have the last word.
It is painstaking work, which disturbs, which can provoke violent reactions, but we are here to disturb those who disturb others, to show them that republican law applies everywhere in France.
We are taking the problem to the root.
"
"Discrepancy between the speeches and the reality on the ground"
A speech which still does not believe the deputy (LFI) Éric Coquerel, present this Friday morning. "This is one of those visits where everything is prepared in advance, and which serve more to communicate than to really look at the reality on the ground," he laughs. For the anecdote, during the visit, we were advertised fixed fines, explaining that more than 5,000 had been distributed in Seine-Saint-Denis. And at the end of the morning, I stayed with the police officers who act daily against drugs, and one of them said to me:
Look, it seems that there will soon be a fixed fine?
See the gap between the speeches and the reality on the ground.
"In its act II of the anti-narcotics plan, the government intends in particular to make" more simple and effective "this fine of 200 euros for consumers, which entered into force in September 2020.
Eric Coquerel also took advantage of the presence of the ministers to hand them over his proposed “transpartisan” law aimed at establishing the legalization of cannabis “under strict state control, from production to sale.
"Ah yes, it's about legalization," responded Gerald Darmanin by retrieving the document.
"Not only", retorted the parliamentarian, who advocates a strategy of prevention after noting the "failure of repressive policies" carried out by successive governments "for thirty years.
"