Le Figaro Bordeaux
For these thieves, the sacred has the value of its copper gutters. Since April 29, a gang of bandits has been raging in Gironde: ten churches have been stripped of their drainage pipes. And their method is as formidable as it is effective according to a police source. Scammers act in broad daylight, in plain sight, wearing chasubles giving the illusion that they are actually doing work. Three individuals, reported by the mayor of Jugazan, were arrested in flagrante delicto on Thursday, while they were looting the church of the commune. "When we arrived, the gutter was on the ground and two vehicles were decamping," says a judicial source in Le Figaro. Intercepted by the gendarmes of Libourne a little further, the criminals, two of them aged 24 and one 35, were placed in custody.
And if it is not established at this stage of the investigation that it is a gang, according to the Libourne prosecutor's office, they are not the only ones to crack down. That afternoon, at 15:31 p.m., an identical theft was noted in Doulezon, while the Catholic shrine of Gauriaguet suffered the same fate at 11:46 a.m. on Friday. Desecrated religious buildings whose desecrated have not yet been arrested. The consecrated places of Martignas-sur-Jalle, Saint-Jean-d'Illac, Isle-Saint-Georges, Saint-Sulpice-et-Cameyrac, Tauriac, Carbon-Blanc and Sainte-Eulalie, too, were victims despite the alerts to the vigilance of the gendarmerie of the Gironde. "The resale price of copper must have increased because there is also an upsurge in theft in this area in companies," says one of his officers.
Not everything is allowed. There are no more limits or respect
Patrick Labesse, Mayor of Carbon Blanc
'It hurts my heart'
«
There is a commotion. It is a red line that has been crossed, "indignant Hubert Laporte, the mayor of Sainte-Eulalie. The elected without label discovered the larceny when leaving the commemoration mass of May 8. "The church, which is in the heart of the village, makes sense to us: weddings and funerals are celebrated there. It's not a building like any other," he insists. For the little copper stolen, which he estimates the sale at 500 euros on the black market, 10,000 euros of renovation work are to be expected. Not content with appropriating the copper of the gutters, the thieves tried to recover the one that surrounds the stained glass windows, degrading their protections in the process. They were repaired last year. "What hurts the heart is that this vandalism will lead to additional expenses while we are already struggling to complete our budget for the restoration of the bell tower," laments the edile. Especially since it is necessary to act as quickly as possible: without gutter, each episode of rain represents a danger for the eighteenth-century paintings that adorn the nave.
The mayor of Carbon-Blanc discovered that the painted gutters of his church were made of copper when they disappeared. A robbery that does not pass. Like all the mayors concerned, Patrick Labesse filed a complaint. The ecologist politician, at the head of a left-wing majority, will also be a civil party if suspects are arrested and tried. "Not everything is allowed. There are no more limits or respect for space and public buildings, "reacts the one who feels "helpless" because "we can not put a policeman or gendarme" behind each of them. While the track represented by the three arrests of Thursday remains in its infancy, the Libourne prosecutor's office is already warning: in collaboration with the Bordeaux prosecutor's office and the internal security forces, everything will be done to arrest the thieves of copper gutters of the churches of the Gironde.
