Small disappointment for the first registrants. The promised “visit” will ultimately be limited to just one of the three rooms of the Urban Supervision Center (CSU). Photos were also banned and forms had to be signed. “The Cnil was very worried when we told them that we wanted to welcome the public. Here, we still have access to a lot of images, ”explains Véronique Borré, the deputy director of the town hall of Nice. The city with the most video surveillance in France has decided to open the doors of the HQ to everyone, where the streams from its 4,113 cameras converge. Or one for 84 inhabitants. A record, by far.
And if this kind of ultra-connected 350 m2 “control room”, boarded up with screens, has already been made accessible to neighborhood associations and delegations from other cities and other countries, it is the first time that the people of the Riviera are widely and regularly invited to attend. With an already certain enthusiasm. The sessions, almost weekly, were stormed. ” I am very curious. In Nice, we say ficanas. We are still in the Holy of Holies of security and I have wanted to see this for a very long time, ”breathes Maryse, 56, among the ten guests of the inaugural open house sequence, Thursday evening.
In HD and with great zoom capabilities
They were all planned for fifteen people. For Thursday, there were five defections “because of the strikes”, said a spokesperson for the municipality. But “everything is complete on the slots that we have opened until June, so we will already have to offer others”, explains the first deputy mayor, Anthony Borré, ready to run nearly two hours of a pro-video surveillance seduction operation. Or in any case of transparency, according to him: “It is normal that each Niçois who, on his taxes, finances this security equipment and this center, can have information and know how we work. »
Because more than a “visit”, in the company of his wife, executive of the town hall, and the director of the municipal police himself, the participants were above all entitled to explanations, to a theoretical course, seated around the table of the meeting room, sometimes transformed into a “crisis room”, at the very top of the building on avenue Borriglione. The mayor, Christian Estrosi, was not there in person on Thursday evening, but his photo and a word of welcome are displayed on giant TVs. “This is where we welcome the prefect and the police for major events,” says Anthony Borré.
At the back of the room, eight screens broadcast live images. All cameras in the city can be displayed there. An operator, joystick in hand, demonstrates. “Everything is in HD, sometimes with great zoom capabilities, specifies the deputy director. Look there, we are on the Bellanda tower and you can clearly see the airport 5 km away. The image, which started at the start of the Promenade des Anglais, very quickly reached the control tower, with a sharpness that impressed the audience.
“Incivility level, we reach heights”
“We also have dome cameras [qui tournent à 360°], others totally autonomous, powered by solar panels, in particular to monitor waterways since storm Alex, and some thermal ones, to detect human presence on the Paillon promenade”, specifies Véronique Borré. Buses are now also equipped, in addition to trams, in real time. Since the election of Christian Estrosi in 2008, the number of devices has been multiplied by 15, from 280 to more than 4,000, in fifteen years.
To secure school forecourts, to intervene in flagrante delicto… Anthony Borré praises their current applications. Including against wild deposits and incivility, videos of garbage deposited anarchically in support. “Incivility level, we reach heights”, judge Maryse. “Frankly, they are rotten people”, slice another visitor. The first deputy also boasts of the benefit of video surveillance “to resolve investigations, with “about 2,000 legal requisitions per year”.
The city campaigns for facial recognition
He also promotes the other uses that the municipality would like to make of it, reminding an already conquered audience that it has been asking for several years for “legislative changes to be able to use facial recognition”. “For example, we are missing a few minutes of the journey of the July 14 terrorist. We haven’t been able to track them down. Artificial intelligence could no doubt have helped us. It is more efficient than the human eye,” he adds.
“It has to remain framed, but to find dangerous individuals, I am totally for it, supports Alexandre, 57, in real estate. We live in a dangerous world and we have to adapt. Personally, I am not afraid of these advances. I have nothing to reproach myself. I am originally from Paris, I have lived in Nice for fifteen years and I have always been in favor of video surveillance. Those who were afraid of it before are demanding it today. It is no longer a question of left or right. It has become transpartisan. »
In 2021, however, the Nice environmental opposition had stepped up to denounce “the very relative effectiveness of this technology”, which would only make it possible to identify the perpetrators of the offense “in 1 to 3% of cases”, and above all its “exorbitant cost”. Asked by 20 minutes on the overall budget invested, the city could not respond immediately. “There are sometimes preconceived ideas, demagoguery, arguments from opponents, even if they are fewer and fewer, but we have nothing to be ashamed of our results. Quicker to give certain figures than others, the municipality indicates that video surveillance would have allowed “8,000 arrests since 2010”.
In a police station in 2025
And she continues to believe hard as iron in its effects. Christian Estrosi announced again this week the installation of new cameras with “automatic reading of license plates”, in an attempt to stem growing drug trafficking in the sensitive district of Les Moulins. A way, according to him, to “try to identify and follow the dealers and consumers”, while “allowing to provide evidence to the police”.
In 2025, the CSU should move to the future Hôtel des polices, the construction of which has started in the former Saint-Roch hospital, a little further south. Funded 75% by the State, this space of 4,000 m2 where the staff of the national and municipal police will be pooled, should accommodate 2,000 agents in total. The nerve center of video surveillance, renamed Center of urban hypervision and command, will be entitled to a wall of screens 25 m long and 6 m high.