Le Figaro Nantes
Blue monochrome, Quai de Malakoff.
Two police officers on motorbikes ride up the back of Nantes station, in front of a motionless line of taxis beaten by the morning patter of rain.
Opposite the Mercure hotel, half a dozen members of the police patrol the roundabout which serves not only the southern slope of the railway platform, but also the sensitive Malakoff district.
The agents mobilized on this gray and damp morning of February 23 did not intervene in a new case of gunshots, drug trafficking or acts of barbarity.
Their daily life is less made up of hemp resins coated in plastic than of number plates and professional cards, the asphalt of the roads and the rubber of the tires.
It's the taxi police.
Be careful, however, not to overuse this name.
Chief Brigadier David raises an eyebrow.
With his colleagues, he belongs to the technical inspections and regulated professions brigade.
“This therefore not only concerns taxis, but also VTCs,
ambulances
, light medical vehicles…”
specifies this sturdy bearded police officer.
He becomes more animated at the mention of the "Boers", the nickname, since 1938, of the Passenger Transport Control Unit of the Paris police headquarters - of which the Nantes brigade is the local counterpart.
And newer, too - it was put in place almost ten years ago.
“We don’t use the term between us
,” teases the agent.
Before recognizing the similarity of the missions.
Namely, the control of passenger transport professionals.
The sector is the subject of tensions.
In Nantes, the more than 200 taxis in the area denounce competition from illegal drivers and VTCs.
The latter, more difficult to quantify, would be around 400 working in the Nantes metropolitan area.
At the end of January, the Loire-Atlantique taxi union (STLA) joined the national mobilization of drivers who were protesting, in particular, against the
“growing proliferation of VTCs”
.
An uberized profession whose members are, in the
“majority”,
accused of not respecting the regulations in force;
or
“unfair competition”
, in the words of the STLA.
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“At night, it’s anarchy”
A Peugeot approaches the group of police officers at the roundabout, hailed by the officers, and stops at their level.
This vehicle rather than any other caught their attention.
“It has its distinctive little red VTC badge near the plate,”
notes Brigadier-Chief David, pointing to the sticker.
Controlling these cars with drivers requires greater vigilance, says the police officer.
“As there is a significant flow around the station, these vehicles have an interest in lurking around, because the algorithm of platforms
such as Uber
, Volt or others sends them trips according to their proximity to customers,”
explains -he.
However, these VTCs are only authorized to circulate on command, they do not have the right to maraud around town in search of customers.
The units present prefer not to reveal the proportion of fraudulent drivers that they control on average during each operation.
The prefect of Loire-Atlantique, Fabrice Rigoulet-Roze, has received a delegation of taxi drivers in recent weeks, promising them to increase controls on VTCs, according to Moblé Ndakakanu, president of the STLA.
“The will is there, but the police are terribly understaffed, particularly to carry out checks on weekends and, especially, in the evening.
At night, it’s totally anarchy
,” assures the taxi to Le
Figaro
.
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Deputy commander of the departmental motorized road safety brigade, Captain Arnaud Lozano, prefers not to stigmatize one or the other profession.
“We monitor all road users in the urban police zone on a daily basis
,” he comments.
In all, around fifteen agents are under his responsibility - of which only a fraction of police officers constitute the Nantes "boers", at the forefront of controlling taxis and VTCs.
A tight unit, but which holds up.