It is 5:00 p.m. this Sunday, March 2, when the tram borrows the ring road in Avignon. Suddenly, two scooter men open fire to each other. Instinctively, the tram driver accelerates and gritles several lights. Miraculously, no one injured is to be deplored. But this shooting is too much.
About fifteen sockets are found, some having landed in vehicles or apartments. One of the shooters had a Kalashnikov, the other of an automatic pistol, according to a police source.
At a time when the National Assembly is preparing to examine, on Monday, the bill “aimed at getting France out of the trap of the narcotrafic”, Avignon – like Grenoble or Rennes – illustrates these medium -sized cities caught up by this scourge.
A few days earlier, three other shootings had made several injured. A 21-year-old was killed at the tram stop “Barbière-Cap Sud”, in what seems to be a settling of accounts with the traffickers of the Cité Saint-Chamand, at the terminus of the line. A stroller was passing by.
“Before, we drew at one o'clock in the morning to impress. Then, we went to the +Jamizations +, targeting the lower members. Now, the novelty is that it takes place in the middle of the day, and it is much more violent,” said AFP Commissioner Charles Barion, head of the Judicial Police in Avignon, a city located in one of the poorest departments in France.
And these clashes have as the backdrop the only tram line, inaugurated in 2019 to open up the southern districts of the city of Popes, classified at UNESCO. “The tram serves all the points of deal,” said the commissioner, “this is the safest means of transport for traffickers”.
Close to the Barbière stop, the tags clearly display the “menu” of the drug, while “drive” inscriptions testify to a well anchored traffic. The deal point “Coffee 2C Barbière” is even listed on Google Maps.
“We feel in danger, on the moon we would be better. Here, it's like a little Marseille,” sighs Hélène Avcioglu, 52 years old.
“My parents forbid me to go out,” says Kévin, 17, who is only entitled to a bowling alley or a little sport on weekends. He's not trying to hide his fear: “When it shoots like that, it concerns us all”.
In 2021, the assassination in broad daylight of the policeman Éric Masson by a young 19 -year -old dealer, sentenced to 30 years in prison, had deeply marked the city. Since then, the situation has continued to get worse.
Faced with these recent violence, elected officials demand once again permanent reinforcements of mobile forces and the dismantling of the 12 deal points identified, whose daily income would oscillate between 20 and 40,000 euros.
The tram drivers, who carry 10,000 passengers every day, expressed their anger by suspending the service of these neighborhoods for a week. They require “guarantees not to find themselves under the fire of the balls”, explains André Saliba, FO delegate of the Orizo transport network.
The feeling of helplessness is palpable. In a letter to the Minister of the Interior, Bruno Retailleau, the socialist mayor, Cécile Helle, admits that the efforts deployed – urban rehabilitation, library, cultural and sports initiatives, hundred municipal police officers, 530 video surveillance cameras – come up against a brutal reality: “a society where violence has banaled in every street corner”.
For the past ten days, around sixty CRS and fifteen police officers have patrolled it, especially near transport, according to the prefecture. But for how long?
Fragile calm seems to have returned.
“There are now the police H24. With the taxes we pay, they could put the army on us,” said an employee of the social lessor Grand Delta Habitat.
But for him, the answer cannot be only safe. “If we want to find a France as we like, we also have to reopen neighborhood houses. Before, we had MJCs, the local police, but Sarkozy cleaned everything in the Karcher,” he said, convinced that the neighborhoods are suffering today the consequences of these political choices.
Bruno Retailleau, current Minister of the Interior, promised last week in the Senate to “fight these narcoracails” with a “global response”, judicial, security and administrative.
“Your predecessor, Gérald Darmanin, chained spectacular operations +net place +. But a clear place, without a project, is an empty place”, recently retorted the PS senator of Vaucluse, Lucien Stanzione.
(With AFP)
