From this Tuesday, the police will benefit from a new weapon to fight against squats in building halls or in common areas.
These new fixed tort fines (AFD) will operate on the same principle as those related to cannabis users.
These fines correspond to a penal sanction which is pronounced outside a trial and carried out by a police officer, a gendarme or a sworn public official during a control.
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And here too, the objective remains the same, to hit the wallets of drug dealers at the foot of buildings.
"It's rather a good thing," said an officer straight away.
"I see nothing but good," said another.
“In terms of narcotics, it is bearing fruit.
It can be expensive for the joint when you leave with a fine of 200 euros, explains a police officer.
For building lobbies, this will make a complementary tool, an additional weapon.
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"This will allow us to be more efficient"
And above all a gain in reactivity, because the procedure is intended to be simple. "This will allow us to be much more effective because the old offense was very difficult to characterize, with the grouping of several complaints, a task that is sometimes complicated to perform in certain neighborhoods," said a police officer. "If we control people sitting on a sofa or filtering the entrance to a building to go see someone, the fine will be easy to draw up, gives an example another police officer. "Before adding:" It is a great tool for public road units. "
Small flat, minors very often work as little hands in this traffic, at lookout stations, around halls or at the entrance of a neighborhood, or as a simple salesperson.
"They are excluded and in the context of hall squats or lookouts in the common areas, we are mainly dealing with them", notes a police officer.
In addition, "if a person refuses to sign the ticket, we must do a full procedure," said another police officer.
And there, back in time, with the deployment of sometimes very time-consuming procedures.
"The bar will follow this experiment closely"
In any case, "the bar will follow this experiment closely," declares Me Olivier Tournillon, the president of the Val-de-Marne.
There is never a quick fix.
You have to know how this will be applied in practice in the department ”.
The representative of the lawyers of the department, in addition to certain abuses, also fears the perverse effects.
"We do not know that they will be the consequences of this measure," he insists.
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"It is very prejudicial to the freedoms to come and go and to assemble," worries from the outset Me Paul Louveau, lawyer at the bar of Créteil.
We make the amalgamation of many people who live normally and people linked to drug trafficking.
These AFDs risk increasing the divide between the daily police and some of the inhabitants of these neighborhoods.
“We are precisely in neighborhoods often occupied by the police.
It's a simple electroshock measure, ”adds Me Louveau.