Three shootings, three dead, eight injured. During the night from Sunday to Monday, the war in which Marseille drug traffickers are engaged – in particular around the control of the Cité de la Paternelle, in the 14th arrondissement – experienced a particularly bloody episode. If for the time being, no element has made it possible to establish a precise link between these cases, the public prosecutor of Marseille, Dominique Laurens, evoked a logic of “vendetta”. “We are in a very worrying dynamic” and “we think that it will continue in the months to come”, insisted the magistrate, recalling that this assessment, as heavy as it is, was in the image of the beginning of year: in this department, 14 people lost their lives and 43 others were injured during settling of accounts in just over three months.
In an attempt to restore calm to the Marseille city, the Minister of the Interior, Gérald Darmanin, announced Monday evening the deployment, in Marseille, of CRS 8, a unit specializing in urban violence. “It is based in Bièvres (Essonne), but from the moment its deployment is decided, the departure is given within a quarter of an hour, explains Johann Cavallero, CRS national delegate of the Alliance union. It’s really a unit that was designed to deal with emergencies, in the event of riots for example. This reinforcement of a hundred men – that is to say half of the brigade – was therefore operational as of Tuesday morning. And if its mission order has not been specified, it is intended to patrol sensitive areas, to reinforce identity checks or security operations, particularly in common areas, in search of drugs or of weapons.
“Show Muscle”
“Their presence makes it possible to increase the territorial coverage in a specific place without removing the police presence elsewhere, assures Eddy Sid, SGP-Police delegate in Marseille. In a crisis situation, this is a real plus. “In February, already, after a series of settling of scores, three sections – nearly a hundred men – had been deployed in Marseille, still in the city of La Paternelle. Objective: occupy the ground to hinder drug trafficking and strengthen controls. “The challenge, with the CRS 8, is to show the muscles”, summarizes Rudy Manna, the departmental secretary of Alliance, recalling that these law enforcement specialists follow specific training on the problems of urban violence. . Their equipment and vehicles are also lighter than those of other companies, in order to be very mobile.
But this help is punctual: a week at most. “The last time they stayed for four days. It’s complicated to change the situation in four days, ”continues the Alliance trade unionist. He cannot help seeing in this announcement from the Minister of the Interior a “form of buzz”. The Marseille police headquarters is also planning communication operations to publicize the role of the CRS 88. But will this new intervention, barely a month after the previous one, be effective? Admittedly, the unit has, for example, had convincing results in Corsica, where it was sent after the aggression of Yvan Colonna; but also in Colmar, where it intervened this summer after the murder of a young Afghan and the violence that followed; or even recently in Rennes, during clashes on the sidelines of the pension reform. But what will happen in Marseille? The turf war against the background of drug trafficking is, in fact, nothing temporary.
300 additional police officers for two years
“The CRS 8 is the emergency response, to prevent the situation from escalating. But to fight effectively against drug trafficking, this reinforcement of the workforce must be sustainable, the response must be structural,” insists Eddy Sid. In a series of tweets, the Minister of the Interior recalled that over the past two years, 300 police officers and three additional CRS units (240 agents) have been deployed in Marseille. He also announced the forthcoming arrival of eleven additional judicial police officers by September to strengthen the research and intervention brigade (BRI) and create an additional group in the criminal brigade. “Insufficient”, unanimously answer the two local trade unionists. “There are around 130 narcotics points in Marseille, we cannot put H-24 cops on each of them, insists Rudy Manna. The police cannot do everything, we need an approach to these neighborhoods as a whole, with National Education, associations…”