"
Nobody asked me to take this wall down
."
Invited on the sets of BFMTV on the occasion of the “
Red Line
” evening
, Didier Lallement, Paris police prefect, reviewed the construction of the wall last September in the Forceval tunnel, on the outskirts of Paris.
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Indeed, on September 24, a few hours after a massive evacuation of the Jardins d'Eole and the Stalingrad district in the 18th and 19th arrondissements, around a hundred drug addicts were moved to the vicinity of the Porte de la Villette, on the border. with Aubervilliers and Pantin (Seine-Saint-Denis).
For Didier Lallement, this wall was justified by an essential reason: "
So that drug addicts do not take refuge in the tunnel
", he begins.
"
We had both ends walled, if I had wanted to avoid the simple passage, I would have walled only one end,
" he adds.
Photo taken on September 29, on the sidelines of a demonstration by residents and elected officials from Pantin and Aubervilliers against the cracker camp set up at Porte de la Villette, and against the construction of the wall between Pantin and Paris which blocks the passage under the device.
François Bouchon / Le Figaro
The critics who targeted this wall are, according to him, paradoxical: “
What I observe is that no one asked me to dismantle this wall, no one, no more the town hall of Paris than of Pantin or Aubervilliers.
It is therefore that it has a utility,
”he says.
“
I am criticized that there are a few crack users on the other side.
There is a certain paradox in saying you have made a wall and there are drug addicts on the other side,
”he insists.
However, the police chief recalls that the displacement of the 130 drug addicts towards the place Auguste Baron, described as "
without residents in the immediate vicinity
", remains "
a temporary solution
": "
I chose this place because it is in Paris l 'one of the most isolated in the sense that nearby residents are not that much.
There are people nearby but less than on rue Riquet
”, he continues, admitting all the same that this place“
was not the right one
”.
He is now asking for the help of institutional actors: "
I did not say that they were doing nothing, but I hope they will find solutions
".