CRS 8 will return to Nantes. Specialized in urban violence, the special police unit will be deployed to “harass deal points”, announced the prefect of Loire-Atlantique after a series of shootings that have occurred in recent weeks in connection with drug trafficking, announced Tuesday the prefect of Loire-Atlantique Fabrice Rigoulet-Roze. Drones will also be deployed to try to restore calm in a city marked by several shootings in recent weeks. The CRS 8 should arrive this Tuesday evening in Nantes.
Forty to fifty police officers will be present “to carry out punching operations against the deal points”, declared the prefect at the end of a crisis meeting with the security services, the police, the elected officials and the prosecutor of the Republic. Drones will be used to provide an overview of these operations.
Several shootings in recent weeks
On the night of May 27 to 28, a 27-year-old man was wounded in the stomach after about fifteen shots in the priority district of Bellevue, between Nantes and Saint-Herblain. The following night, a 15-year-old boy was shot in the leg in the same neighborhood. This series of shootings had started on May 17, near a tram station in Bellevue, where a 23-year-old man had been shot and killed, just hours after shootings reported to the police, who had not found a victim but “many traces of blood”.
These different episodes “are not necessarily linked to each other”, noted the public prosecutor, Renaud Gaudeul, but they seem to target both deal point organizers and resellers. For Pascal Bolo, deputy mayor of Nantes in charge of security, “we are facing a national problem of industrialization of drug trafficking” which concerns other French cities.