This is perhaps the culmination of more than two years of open struggle against crack and its users in Paris. For a long time they wandered Stalingrad Square. Then, they were moved by the Paris police headquarters to a park, not far away, before being directed near the ring road, Square Forceval (19th arrondissement). A more remote place, between Seine-Saint-Denis and Paris. A wall, quickly baptized the “wall of shame”, was even erected there.
This Wednesday, the police began to dismantle this same camp, with the objective this time that consumers find no other place to settle. “On my instruction, the prefect of police is proceeding with the final dismantling of the ‘crack camp’ in Square Forceval. 1,000 police officers will be deployed so that this camp does not reconstitute elsewhere”, tweeted Interior Minister Gérald Darmanin when the security forces entered the camp.
Nearly 1,000 police officers mobilized
Shortly before 7 a.m., a large police force deployed around the camp, in the presence of the new Paris police chief, Laurent Nunez, and the prefect of the Ile-de-France region, Marc Guillaume. “In total, nearly 1,000 police officers will be mobilized over 24 hours, both to carry out the operation, but also the following days to secure the various strategic sectors and thus avoid the reconstitution of another fixation point”, we explained to the Ministry of the Interior. According to our journalist Guillaume Novello, who follows the dismantling for 20 minutesthe operation was kept secret, the town halls not having been informed.
The problem of crack appears in the roadmap entrusted by Gérald Darmanin to the new prefect of police. Laurent Nuñez has “one year” to eradicate it. On September 25, he had promised that the site would close. Their arrival seriously disrupted public security in the surrounding neighborhoods, provoking demonstrations and legal action to demand the evacuation of the camp. According to associations, between 300 and 400 people during the day and 150 at night, including 35 to 40% women, were present in this square. The dealers there sold the pebbles (dose of crack) in the middle of the consumers.