Le Figaro Nice
Between Eric Ciotti and Christian Estrosi, the battle of numbers does not weaken. The deputy of the first constituency of the Alpes-Maritimes does not miss any opportunity to shoot an arrow at his worst enemy the mayor of Nice. Poor management of the city, over-indebtedness, "bling-bling" policy, tax increases... The parliamentarian's quiver is never short of ammunition. In a statement given to the press Wednesday at dawn, the president of the Republicans denounces this time the growing insecurity that would reign in the streets of the capital of the Riviera. And he warns: "I will personally ensure that Nice does not take the same path as Marseille."
To illustrate his point, Eric Ciotti relies in particular on the census of the number of wounded by firearm or knife in Nice since the beginning of the year. From 1 January to 31 May, 36 of these incidents were reported. "Added to this are dozens of brawls. Already this summer, I warned about extremely worrying or even explosive figures," he insists. The figures for delinquency in Nice for the whole of 2022 would also go in the same direction, with, for example, a 7.2% increase in intentional assault, 16% in sexual violence and 24.1% in vehicle theft. Data corroborated by those of the Ministry of the Interior which points to a general increase in delinquency of 7.2% in Nice, over one year. And Eric Ciotti to drive the nail in: "In Nice, the security conditions are deteriorating from year to year and this affects all the districts of the city. At the end of April, firefighters sent to the Moulins district to rescue people had to be escorted by the police."
The offensive of the Maralpin deputy does not stop there. It also charges one of Christian Estrosi's pride, if not his greatest: the city's municipal police. The mayor regularly praises it, recalling that it is the first of France, in terms of staff and means. After all, don't the 550 officers the city claims to have have a state-of-the-art urban supervision center? State-of-the-art cameras? Or artificial intelligence software to identify and fine vehicles parked on bike paths? And to complete the whole, an elite soldier, former soldier of the prestigious commando Parachutist of the air number 10 (CPA 10) was he not appointed at the end of last year at the head of the municipal police of Nice? On December 12, Jérôme Marcenac was enthroned in Nice during a ceremony with great pomp at the monument to the dead of Rauba-Capeù.
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"Concretely, between departures and sick leave, there are not currently 550 agents on public roads"
A municipal police officer.
But now, according to Eric Ciotti, there would be today an "extremely important decrease in numbers". The agents would suffer from "a significant lack of means", he assures figures in support. "In September 2019, the mayor of Nice declared that he had 630 agents. In September 2020, he announced on a television set that he had 550 municipal police officers in his ranks. The figures I have been given show the opposite. Thus, the municipal police of Nice would now have 348 officers, "he adds. "At last count, there was a decline in numbers. Mr Estrosi has always been a little ahead of the curve on figures. Concretely, between departures and sick leave, there are not today 550 agents on the public road, "says in this sense a municipal policeman to the Figaro.
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Should we see a link with the City's decision to call on the "GITeS", a private security group that now operates for social landlords in Toulouse? The model was in any case chosen as in Montpellier, to tranquilize the district of Moulins, gangrenous by drug trafficking. The recruitment of these private security guards has already begun and twelve positions are to be filled.
The president of the Republicans, who no longer hides his ambition to run for mayor in the next municipal elections, summons the one he intends to dethrone to launch "urgently" a recruitment campaign. "I also ask him to launch an internal audit on the management of his municipal police to establish the reasons for the very many departures," he concludes. As it has become accustomed to with each new assault of Eric Ciotti, the Estrosi clan is careful not to react hot. Revenge is a dish that is eaten cold, salad niçoise too. "It is out of the question that we hurry to rectify the that Eric Ciotti tells," says a close to the mayor.
