At the City of Paris as at the police headquarters, we swear that the dialogue is not broken, that discussions are continuing to try to find “a positive outcome” to the crisis. However, twelve days after the evacuation of drug addicts, crack addicts for the vast majority of them, from the Jardins d’Eole, on the edge of the 18th and 19th arrondissements of Paris, the situation seems more explosive than ever. During this weekend alone, residents attacked a small group of drug addicts they suspected to be involved in the death of a young autistic neighborhood. Three of them were slightly injured.
Despite these increasingly significant tensions, it is difficult to see a way out of the crisis, the City of Paris and the prefecture blaming each other for being responsible for the situation. “This extreme difficulty was foreseeable following your decision to unilaterally close access to the Gardens of Eole to crack users, without finding concomitantly and together, an alternative solution to install them in another place”, wrote on Saturday , Prefect Didier Lallement to Anne Hidalgo’s assistant security, Nicolas Nordman, who asked him to urgently unblock police personnel in order to “be able to control and evict people who are stagnant” on the outskirts of the park, ie around 200 drug addicts in a wandering situation.
A deep disagreement
To understand the controversy, return in mid-May. To appease the residents of the Place Stalingrad, exasperated by the cries, the fights and the traffic at the foot of the buildings, the prefecture and the town hall decide to temporarily regroup drug addicts in the Jardins d’Eole, further back from the houses. Fifteen days later, a turnaround: Anne Hidalgo promises residents that they will find their park again this summer. “Obviously the situation is very complicated today, but it was already so at Éole,” insists Anne Souyris, the deputy in charge of public health. There were already brawls, violence, mortar fire. The prefect, him, opposes such an evacuation in the absence of alternative solutions and proposes a regrouping place Auguste-Baron, at the edge of Aubervilliers, under the peripheral. Clear refusal of the Town Hall. “This is not a serious proposal,” comments the elected official. We are not going to install them on a patch of dried grass, surrounded by cars to recreate a crack hill. “
Despite this disagreement, drug addicts were evacuated from the park on June 30 … but gathered around. “We warned several times that, without a fallback point, they would necessarily stay in the neighborhood, insists a source within the prefecture. We were not listened to and today we are being asked to oust them. But where to go? There must be a predefined area. “In his letter, the prefect of police reiterates his proposal” to exchange quickly “in order to find an” alternative place “. “My goal is to prevent local residents from becoming victims of the troubles caused by crackers again,” he explains. The provisional solution of regrouping within the Jardins d’Eole had quite significantly improved the situation. “
Difference in philosophy
But the dispute between the town hall and the prefecture could not be limited to a disagreement of timing or even geographical, it is above all philosophical. Anne Hidalgo, relying in particular on a report published in January by Inserm and the French Observatory for Drugs and Drug Addiction, wishes to open reception structures, associated with consumption rooms, to take care of drug addicts . What Didier Lallement is not in favor of, fearing the creation of a place of fixation. “Where there will be drug addicts, there will necessarily be dealers,” notes this prefectural source. But for now, that’s not even the problem since it’s not allowed. “
The question of generalizing the “shooting rooms”, tested until 2022 in Paris and Strasbourg, indeed divides up to the highest summit of the State. The Minister of Health, Olivier Véran, is rather favorable, his counterpart of the Interior, Gérald Darmanin, is firmly opposed to it. If Jean Castex has not decided on this thorny question, Anne Hidalgo has already promised the opening of a first structure by the end of the summer.
“We hope to open three or four structures combining reception, medico-social care and consumption room during the year and a first very quickly,” explains Anne Souyris, without setting a schedule. The elected is hopeful that an exceptional authorization will be granted to them before a law regulates the situation. What if it doesn’t? “The government cannot stay on this status quo, we cannot just wait for it to happen,” she insists. But as the presidential campaign takes shape, not sure that the government wants to seize on such a divisive subject.