After the Paris 2024 interlude and its exceptional security measures, the issue of insecurity quickly resurfaced with a new tragedy: the murder of a Grenoble municipal officer in the exercise of his duties and while he was helping a motorist. The murderer is well known to the police: violence, trafficking, receiving stolen goods, driving without a license, thefts… and at large. A few weeks earlier, it was a road check that turned into a tragedy after a refusal to comply. Here again, the suspect’s record is already filled with ten convictions.
An impunity that can only reinforce the fears of many French people. In a June 2024 survey, 1 in 3 said they were “worried about insecurity in France”; in another published this month, 84% considered security to be the priority issue for the future government. Only one part of the political class remains deaf to the problem: the left.
Yesterday, she contemptuously relegated insecurity to the level of a feeling or a simple impression. Faced with the situation, she has adapted her discourse and is now able to admit the “mount[ée de] insecurity” on TV sets, as Eric Piolle, mayor (EELV) of Grenoble, did last week. On the ground, however, she still refuses to adopt the necessary measures to stem it. The cities she administers, unsurprisingly, often occupy the podiums of the municipalities most affected by insecurity. Because, if the miracle recipe does not exist, the successes of the communities in terms of security are today widely known.
A laxity that fuels the anger of the French
They are structured around three common denominators. Urban renovation is the first. But to be effective in terms of security, the destruction of the towers must be accompanied by the development of a municipal police force. It must be armed, present day and night and seven days a week, capable of relying on video surveillance that deters crime, facilitates the intervention of both municipal and national police officers on the ground and that of justice by providing valuable evidence.
Finally, the last fundamental point: the development of a real partnership dynamic with all security stakeholders but also with the public prosecutor’s office, schools, and landlords. Central cooperation to prevent crime, share information and coordinate actions. All the cities that have applied this recipe have seen results: a crime rate halved.
In reality, it is the opposite policy that the mayor of Grenoble has been pursuing since 2014. As soon as he was elected, he proposed dismantling the city’s cameras and “selling them to Christian Estrosi”. Concerning the arming of the municipal police, the project put forward by his predecessor has been shelved: “Arming [la] municipal police is to expose it to […] risks.” Eric Piolle is just one of the standard-bearers of this laxity that fuels the anger of the French. In the Assembly, the left continues to reject any initiative likely to strengthen security. In 2020, it voted against the “global security” law, described as an “authoritarian drift” and liberticidal. However, it offered initial responses to reassure the French and regain ground against delinquency by facilitating the coordination of police officers, the development of video surveillance and new technologies. Firmness is definitely not on the agenda when, in the aftermath of the Mougins tragedy, the first secretary of the PS responds that prison is not “a satisfactory response” for repeat offenders.
Blindness is now giving way to an equally ideological immobility. A position that effectively excludes the left from any government participation. An irresponsible attitude when all indicators measuring violence have been constantly increasing since 2018. The score of the extreme right too… Dear Michel Barnier, it’s your turn now!
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