The Planoise district in Besançon, a republican reconquest district (QRR), is once again placed in the spotlight. On Monday, 21 people were arrested there as part of an operation against drug trafficking and gun violence.
A “major police operation” in the words of the Zonal Directorate of the Judicial Police and made possible after months of investigations carried out by the Besançon judicial police service. Monday, more than 200 agents participated in the operation, including the PJ of Besançon and Dijon, the reinforcement of the services of Nancy, Metz, Reims, Mulhouse and Strasbourg. Six research and intervention brigades (BRI), from Paris, Versailles, Dijon, Metz or Strasbourg, also took part in the operation, supported by the Raid de Lyon and Strasbourg branches as well as five dog teams. of the zonal direction of public security East, according to the same source. “A CRS force” was also mobilized to ensure the security of the operation, it was added.
“Investigations are continuing”
As a reminder, the district has been the scene for months of a turf war between dealers. A 15-year-old boy was shot dead there in December and a man “unfavourably known” to authorities was shot and killed in another nearby area of town on Saturday night. According The Republican East, he was a “neighborhood kingpin” with a “heavy past of delinquency”. At the end of 2022, a judicial investigation had been opened after two shootings which had left one dead in Planoise. And between November 2019 and March 2020, two rival gangs clashed for control of drug trafficking in this district: 18 shootings left one dead and 11 injured.
“We are on a criminal case (…) Charges weigh on all those in custody for acts of complicity or direct participation in the facts followed by the investigation”, explained to an AFP correspondent a source close to the file. “The investigations are continuing”, it was added, indicating that “the times of police custody will be extended for 96 hours within the framework of the association of criminals”.