Interior Minister Gérald Darmanin is in Marseille this Tuesday, September 12, after a new shooting that occurred on Sunday in a housing estate in the 10th arrondissement of the city. A 24-year-old woman died after being hit by a stray bullet that passed through the wall of her apartment. Gérald Darmanin must also go to Nice, after announcing the arrival of a CRS 8 unit [spécialisée dans les violences urbaines] following a shooting in a sensitive area of the city. Pope Francis is expected on September 23 in the Phocaean city
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From our correspondent in Marseille,
Since the start of the year, the Marseille prosecutor’s office has counted around forty deaths and more than a hundred injured, linked to drug trafficking. And it’s a record, in barely eight months, the year 2023 has already been deadlier than previous years. For comparison, there were 37 deaths linked to drug banditry in Marseille in 2022.
Shots, almost daily, now heard in broad daylight and which mainly affect small or large players in drug trafficking. But there were also collateral victims: two men aged 43 and 63, killed in the spring, and the young woman, hit on Sunday, died this Tuesday, September 12.
Unbridled crime
The violence continues, despite government announcements and reinforcements sent to the area. The logic of trafficking networks is no longer the same. In the war between two very powerful networks, responsible for the majority of deaths this year, the objective is to terrorize the rival clan. In other words, kill for the sake of killing, it doesn’t matter who as long as it’s an adversary. And despite the arrest of around fifteen people having committed or participated in assassinations in recent months, if the shootings continue, it is thanks to the important recruitment system put in place by the traffickers, thanks to the The help of social networks, which makes it possible to attract many people, most of them very young, from all over France.
However, numerous reinforcements have been announced or deployed in recent months. In Marseille, 90 new police stations have been opened, 11 judicial police officers are expected this month as reinforcements and, a few weeks ago, the CRS8 was deployed in Marseille, at the request of the police chief. She wants to reassure the population. A few weeks ago, she assured that police and justice personnel had never been so mobilized.
The Marseillais mobilized
The distress, but also the anger of residents and bereaved relatives is real. They have demonstrated numerous times: since the start of the year, there have been numerous white marches and rallies to denounce violence and insecurity. And if several family collectives ended up being formed, the demands remain the same: families and residents are demanding the return of public services, social actors, and community police, in these neighborhoods that most consider abandoned by the State.
One of these collectives is now adopting an unprecedented approach: last week, around fifty families took administrative action to force the State to act in the face of drug trafficking. The administrative court deemed this first request inadmissible, the collective is preparing to file a new one.
Read alsoViolence in Marseille: “We are at the end of the chain in the fight against drug trafficking”