URBAN RODEO. Urban rodeos caused several deaths throughout France in August 2022. Faced with these illegal phenomena, the Minister of the Interior promised to strengthen controls with three control operations per day and per police station.
A 7-year-old girl seriously injured in Pontoise, an Afghan killed in Colmar and a Marseillais who died in an accident, all these tragedies that occurred in August 2022 have urban rodeos as a common denominator. These illegal and dangerous behaviors on public roads have become one of the priorities of the police and of the Minister of the Interior, Gérald Darmanin. The member of the government, who reacted to each of the accidents listed above, took decisions accordingly on August 16. “From tomorrow, each police station will carry out at least 3 anti-rodeo operations a day. I will do everything to protect honest people against these offenders”, he tweeted insisting on the first wave of intensification of controls on urban rodeos . On the day of the launch of these daily operations, the prefect of police of Paris Laurent Nuñez specified that in the capital “there are 79 districts, that means that we will carry out 240 operations every day on the areas of competence of the prefecture of police”.
A speech on the significant increase in control operations that Gérald Darmanin also delivered on Wednesday August 17 during his trip to Créteil in Val-de-Marne. The Minister welcomed the arrest of more than 2,200 people and the seizure of 1,800 scooters and motorcycles on urban rodeos since the beginning of 2022. A statement to congratulate the best results compared to the previous year and supported by another statement from the minister: “I asked to intensify these checks. In one week, they have greatly intensified. […] This shows that during the month of August, we are able to respond to the French’s demand for authority”. Gérald Darmanin continued his assessment with figures according to which since August 8, 14,000 forces of the order checked 42,165 people, made 338 arrests and seized 157 vehicles.
A girl seriously injured in an urban rodeo in Pontoise
The first accident in the sad series of dramas linked to urban rodeos is the one that injured a 7-year-old girl in Pontoise on August 5. The young girl named Kenya spent ten days in a coma before waking up on Monday August 16. If his life is no longer in danger, the child risks having serious consequences. Bennerose, the mother of the little girl announced through her lawyer that she wanted to file a complaint against the State for inaction report BFM TV.
When she was mowed down by a biker riding an urban rodeo, the little girl was playing with another child in her residential neighborhood. Bennérose says she has seen urban rodeos again at the place of her daughter’s accident since the tragedy: “When I get out of work, I see them doing that all the time. Where they knocked down my daughter, it’s not not a place to do that. It’s up to the police to do their job.”
An Afghan dead in Colmar after an urban rodeo
On August 15, west of Colmar, a 27-year-old Afghan boy was shot dead on the sidelines of an urban rodeo. According to the account of the facts, the young man was with a group of friends in the street when a scooter driver who was engaged in urban rodeo passed in front of them. Summoned to stop because of the noise pollution, the driver would have left for a few moments and returned armed to the group to open fire fatally wounding the victim.
An urban rodeo driver died in Marseille
The latest accident to date is the one that occurred in Marseille on the evening of Tuesday August 16 around 9:30 p.m. It was a 19-year-old young man who practiced urban rodeo on a large engine who killed himself on a motorcycle in the 11th arrondissement of Marseille, according to Provence. The man who was wearing a helmet lost control of his 650cc motorcycle and violently hit a pole. He succumbed to his injuries in the evening.