Several hours after the fire, an acrid smell of burnt materials still emanates from the elementary school in Les Noyers. In this outlying district of the town of Sucy-en-Brie, in the heart of Val-de-Marne, a gang of young people took advantage of the chaos of the night of Thursday June 29 to set fire to the establishment, including a section whole wall was licked by the flames. Quickly alerted by a resident, the firefighters intervened directly and managed to control the fire. “But we came close to disaster,” blows the mayor of the city, Marie-Carole Ciuntu (Les Républicains). With a gesture, she points to a gas pipe located a few centimeters from the start of the fire. In the fine rain of this Saturday, July 1, the elected official expressed her dismay: “This violence is absolutely intolerable, but above all, it is incomprehensible.”
Its teams have not slept for three days, or almost. As well as the school, a sports shop in the city center was vandalized, while the city’s castle, built in the 17th century and recently renovated, had to be protected by law enforcement to avoid any attack . This Wednesday, June 28, a wall of the municipal police station, located in the Fosse Rouge district, was also set on fire and damaged. And the previous night, the lobby of the building that houses the civil status service was largely ransacked. Since the death of young Nahel, killed on June 27 in Nanterre by the shooting of a policeman after refusing to comply, Sucy-en-Brie has lived to the rhythm of the urban violence that takes place there every night. “The mobilization is not massive, but does great damage”, says Marie-Carole Ciuntu, who describes bands of “20 to 40 young people maximum” who walk around town in the middle of the night, fire mortars from artifice, erect barricades which they set on fire, and attempt to damage public buildings by all possible means. “All with a well-established operating mode, filming on social networks,” said the mayor.
If these bands are mainly made up of young teenagers, the city councilor suspects older inhabitants, from Sucy-en-Brie or surrounding municipalities, of giving them very clear instructions and encouraging them in their degradations. “I tell you very clearly: this has nothing to do with the tragic event of Nahel’s death or any claim. It’s just an opportunity to break to break, to feel their supposed omnipotence , and to get drunk on a feeling of impunity”, she analyzes. In the city center of Sucy-en-Brie, the events of the last few days are on everyone’s lips. A resident shares his suspicions about a group of young people he had “never met in the neighborhood before”, retired women seated at the restaurant are worried about the rise in violence, a shopkeeper says he is ready to “not not let it go in the event of an attack”. Some are more than worried: in the middle of the day last week, a restaurateur was threatened by a group of young people letting her know that her establishment could burn down in the evening. “Friday evening, we closed earlier than expected. I do not sleep, I spend the night in front of my video surveillance”, she says, anguished.
“The State abandons its quarters”
In this city of 27,000 inhabitants, directly linked to Paris by the RER A, the pavilions rub shoulders with the blocks of buildings in the Cité verte and Fosse rouge districts, mainly made up of rental housing and a large part of social housing. The towers, built in the 1960s within the park of the old castle and on the bank of the Morbras, are home to more than 2,000 inhabitants, most of whom have never left the district. Here too, urban violence is widely commented on by residents, who can only see the damage. “Everyone would like to do something, to prevent the young people in the neighborhood from going to break… But we feel helpless”, regrets Martine Valoteau, president of the association Sharing cultures, which offers in particular dance lessons, sewing or cooking.
Resident of the Fosse rouge since 1982, she claims to have seen the district “evolve in the right direction”, energized by numerous associative events. “We do everything to create a link, to ease tensions. But unfortunately, it takes time … And we can’t do everything alone”, she regrets: “The truth is that the State is abandoning these neighborhoods, and then expects town halls and associations to do all the work. But that’s not enough.” To prevent the Cité verte and the Fosse rouge from closing in on themselves, Marie-Carole Ciuntu also claims to have “worked a lot” on their development: “We have favored associations there, relocated part of the public service and the municipal police station, we have a social center that helps with homework and offers all kinds of activities, a job center, a recycling center, a solidarity grocery store, shops…” In 2022, a a vast renovation project has also been launched, and a school with around twenty classes is currently under construction, at a total cost of 15 million euros.
But nothing helped: around the shops of the Rond d’Or, in the heart of the district, several young people expressed their feeling of abandonment. For police checks deemed “abusive”, benches suddenly removed by the town hall or a stadium destroyed and rebuilt in “smaller”, they tell of their hatred of the police, their resentment vis-à-vis the mayor, their lack total confidence in politicians, and “a resentment that is transmitted from generation to generation”. For them, Nahel’s death is an explosion. “The straw that broke the camel’s back,” sums up a 21-year-old young man. “The dialogue with the police has been broken for a long time. Here, we will never be treated like the others, so we respond to hatred with hatred,” he adds. “When we see that the kitty for the family of the policeman who fired is five times larger than that launched for Nahel’s mother, how to be ‘appeased’? How not to feel betrayed?” Despairs another. Not everyone agrees on the intensity of the violence, and many question the destruction of schools or the looting of shops. “But if the little ones attack the town hall, the police or the castle, I don’t hide from you that I don’t care, even if they are symbols of the city. is the Rond d’or”, estimates a “big” of the district.
“Young people respect us”
Patiently, Lundja listens to each of these young people. Referent within the social center of Sucy-en-Brie, this resident knows the whole neighborhood, or almost. With a broad smile, she greets passers-by, asks for news of a mother, a cousin, a sister… And tries to keep the dialogue open. “Honestly, if breaking was of any use, I would do it with you. But do you really feel like it’s useful?”, she asks, while recalling the direct consequences of the fires on the inhabitants of the neighborhood or the risk of arrest by the police. In a firm tone, she recalls “the basics”. “You don’t like that we put you all in the same bag? So why do the same with the police? Behind the uniform, there are human beings, they are not all the same”, she repeats . Some listen to it, others argue, still others take the opportunity to make a request to the mayor. All respect “the daronne”. When she sees that it doesn’t take, Lundja also changes the subject: “I’m here to sow seeds, not to lecture them.” Before leaving, she nevertheless slips in some maternal advice: “Promise me that if you get arrested, you won’t be the guy.”
In 2021, Lundja created the association Parents solidaires de Sucy-en-Brie with other residents. Following fights between young people, and the death of one of them for “a story of jealousy”, they decided to react, and to reinvest public space with adolescents. “We go out, we do rounds in the evening or at night, we raise awareness. The young people respect us: they are not going to do the same stupid things in front of ‘the mother of’ or ‘the sister of'”, says Aïssé, member of the association and mother of three little girls. But the young woman admits: since the death of Nahel, this awareness does not always bear fruit. “Honestly, everything happens on social networks. They watch a video of violence on Snapchat, and want to do the same in their city… It’s a competition, it excites them, it amuses them. At the start, there was a real cause, now they just want to smash.”
Driss Soussi, president of the Cultural Association of Muslims of Sucy-en-Brie, agrees. Unlike the riots of 2005, where this resident felt “a real societal cause, a desire to change things, and support from the inhabitants for the boiling of the district”, he now regrets “meaningless” violence, sometimes carried out by young people “unknown to Sucy”, who are “not controllable”. In an attempt to calm tempers and reason with the most violent, he published an open letter on Friday June 30, calling for calm and peace. “It is not certain that the violent degradations with the fires, the lootings, the destruction of the means of transport of the public service respond to a healthy anger in connection with the drama of Nanterre”, he writes, calling on the parents to “ keep their young people at home”, and “ask questions” when their teenagers “are out at night”: “I hope they will listen. But what I fear is that some will say nothing and do not think no less.”