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At number 5 Place du General de Gaulle, in Nice, along the tramway tracks, a Haussmannian building dominates.
Sun-drenched, the unbleached stones of Saint-Maximin betray none of the secrets they keep, sheltered from the curious.
For ordinary mortals, this building is nothing more than the municipal police station.
However, a few floors above, hides one of the master weapons of the city: the urban supervision center;
that in Nice everyone simply calls
“
the CSU
”
.
Created in 2010 at the request of Christian Estrosi, it is today the first video protection complex in France and a laboratory for technological innovations.
90 pairs of eyes take turns there permanently, every day of the year, to scrutinize dozens of screens.
A device that is part of the security continuum regularly put forward by the municipality.
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To access the CSU, you must first take a guarded door, then an elevator accessible by badge only and, finally, another security door.
It's not the DGSI, but the atmosphere exudes confidentiality.
It is to the crisis room that we are taken.
The latter is activated for the management of major events, like a football world cup final, where the fervor can quickly turn into confrontation.
In this room, a large square desk occupies the space.
Several giant screens line the walls.
All are directly connected to the 4,000 cameras that mesh the city over 72 square kilometres.
"There were 280 in 2010
," recalls Véronique Borré, the city's deputy general manager,
security
"need" .
State-of-the-art fixed and autonomous cameras
At the cutting edge of technology, some of these cameras are fixed, others nomadic and autonomous because they run on solar energy.
“
They help us to fight against delinquency, but also to help people.
We have also installed some in Vésubie following storm Alex, which allows us to keep control of what is happening
", continues Véronique Borré, who also heads the Agency for Environmental Health Safety and Risk Management of the Nice Côte d'Azur Metropolis.
Many of these devices have a zoom that can magnify up to 32 times.
From the Colline du Château, on the tip of Rauba-Capeu, the lens, for example, has no trouble projecting itself onto the tarmac of Nice airport, a distance of
about seven kilometers as the crow flies.
“ Not bad
», Skull the agent who manipulates the camera in front of our eyes.
The CSU Situation Room.
Here during a point with the press, on December 14, in the company of the mayor of Nice, Christian Estrosi, and his first deputy delegate for Security, Anthony Borré.
Nicolas Daguin / Le Figaro
Some also allow operators to zoom into the image once the recording has been made, without loss of quality.
A feat.
“We also have the possibility, with a single camera, of creating areas of interest.
In other words, a single lens can give us the equivalent of 24 cameras.”
More than 1,000 of them equip Nice buses and trams.
"We are one of the only cities to have our entire transport network with real-time referrals,"
says Véronique Borré.
“In a dedicated room”
, specifies Anthony Borré, the first assistant delegate for security.
In fact, the law does not allow municipal police officers to view live images of public transport.
It is therefore specialized operators who take care of it.
Finally, pedestrian cameras equip each municipal police patrol.
And since last November, an agent can decide, if he wishes, to retransmit in real time to the urban supervision center the images he records on the public highway.
Of course, there is no desire on our part to replace humans with technology.
Both are complementary
Véronique Borré, Deputy City Manager
Three video operating rooms equipped with 90 screens make it possible to manage this vast system: one for managing events on public roads, another dedicated to the protection of schools and the fight against incivility and a last dedicated to the network of tram lines.
Some police officers even have the option of carrying out virtual patrols.
Eyes riveted on his screen, imperturbable, an agent walks the streets of a very specific sector of the Baie des Anges, looking for the slightest “
anomaly
”.
“
Of course, there is no desire on our part to replace humans with technology.
The two are complementary
,” insists Véronique Borré.
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Stuck a few meters further, in a small cramped room, the CSU switchboard and its few agents are ready to draw their handset.
“We have about 90,000 calls a year.
For information but also police help when people cannot reach 17.
This standard is also connected to several municipal tools: emergency call terminals (200), buttons and alert boxes (1352) and even connected watches made available to merchants.
Further still, a video extraction room allows the viewing and replay of video sequences.
They are kept for 10 days in
The images from the cameras are kept for 10 days in these imposing servers.
Nicolas Daguin / Le Figaro
Other technologies make the CSU even more efficient and innovative.
The crisis room, for example, is equipped with a large 3D touch table.
This allows decision-makers - the prefect and the commissioner of the national police, among others - to display by a selection the different types of sensors of the city, of family of buildings (places of worship, schools...) and the position of operational units.
“It's really an additional tool for us, especially on crisis PC activations.
But we also use it at the operational level of the municipal police to position our crews on traffic diversions or demonstrations for example”,
explains the head of the CSU, Gregory Pezet, in full demonstration.
More modest but just as effective touch pads are made available to the Raid's elite units so that they can benefit from a video report from the city's cameras during an intervention.
The head of the CSU, Gregory Pezet, in full demonstration of a large 3D touch table which equips the crisis room.
Nicolas Daguin / Le Figaro
“I consider that all those who have not taken this turn, who have taken the time to arm their municipal police, to have them work 24 hours a day and who have taken the time to equip themselves with security cameras video protection, have a delay”
, analyzes the “security gentleman” from Nice, Anthony Borré, questioned on the usefulness of such technology in Nice.
“The changeover is 2015.
It's the Bataclan.
Moreover, after this attack, we considerably extended the system of the CSU”
, he justifies.
I consider that all those who have not taken this turn, who have taken the time to arm their municipal police, to have it work 24 hours a day and who have taken the time to equip themselves with video protection cameras , have a time delay
Anthony Borré, First Deputy Mayor of Nice Delegate for Security
A very meager extension compared to the future police station which must accommodate, from 2025, all the security actors of the city.
But above all, the first “Urban Hypervision and Command Center (CHUC)” in France.
A space of 3400 square meters "hyper" connected, which will bring together the Operational Command Center of the Municipal Police (COC), the Multimodal Center for Metropolitan Travel (CMDM), the PC Security, the Communal Command Post (PCC), etc. .
Model of the urban hypervision and command center which will replace the current CSU in the future police station in Nice.
City of Nice
The deployment of artificial intelligence
It is also at the CHUC that the municipality intends to deploy several artificial intelligence systems, such as facial recognition and automated detection of litter dumps on public roads.
"
It's the extra step",
points out Véronique Borré.
The city of Nice is also the first in France to have experimented, in real conditions, with this technology on the public highway during Carnival 2019.
“We tested several things.
First access controls, replacing badges with facial recognition, then the search for a person lost in the crowd and the identification of a person who could be dangerous.
Everything worked perfectly
, ”boasts the deputy general manager.
Still, today, the regulatory framework imposed by the Cnil limits any development in the field.
If Christian Estrosi pleads for a law of experimentation in the matter, it is not certain that he will win his case.
While a bill was being examined in Parliament on Tuesday as part of the "augmented cameras" that could be installed at the 2024 Olympic Games, the National Commission for Computing and Freedoms, through the voice of its president, Marie- Laure Denis, called on the parliamentarians at the microphone of
France Info
to
"not introduce facial recognition".