The attack had been filmed and triumphantly claimed on social networks. In a video posted on January 15, 2021 on Snapchat, a teenager holds up his trophy with a smile: a white phone stolen from the victim, stained with blood. “The blood of enemies,” he says in the caption, adding a smiley with hearts instead of eyes. A few minutes earlier, Yuriy, a schoolboy who was about to celebrate his 15th birthday, was beaten up on the slab of Beaugrenelle, in the 15th arrondissement of Paris, by a dozen people. The young man was taken in very serious condition to the Necker hospital, where he underwent several surgeries. Two years after the facts, four minors will appear from this Tuesday before the juvenile court ruling in criminal matters.
One of them will be tried for “attempted murder”, two others for “complicity in attempted murder”, and the last for “criminal conspiracy to commit a crime”. In their order of indictment, the investigating judges consider that “the facts are part of a context of rivalry between young individuals, residents of the 15th arrondissement of Paris, forming the RD4 band on the one hand, and that of the plateau of Vanves on the other hand”. “It is established that the aggression of Yuriy […] was an act of revenge in response to the aggression suffered “five days earlier by the half-brother and cousin of two of the defendants, according to the magistrates, who recall that the victim had a screwdriver in his poached.
“The reason doesn’t matter”
In 2020, the services of the Ministry of the Interior, contacted by 20 minutes, had counted 74 gangs in France, including 45 under the jurisdiction of the Prefecture of Police, and 10 in Essonne. The number of fights between gangs fell by 13.4% in the first part of 2022: Place Beauvau recorded 256 between January and August, mainly in Ile-de-France (82%), compared to 306 in the same period the previous year. On the other hand, their number increased slightly between September and October 2022: 79 facts observed, compared to 74 over the same period the previous year, i.e. an increase of 6.8%.
“The phenomenon of gangs is very old and dates back to the Middle Ages”, recalls Gérard Mauger, sociologist and director of research emeritus at the CNRS. “More recently, there were the black jackets. Which shows that it’s a phenomenon that has never really stopped in France for seventy years now”, he adds, specifying that it only concerns “a fraction of young people from the working classes: it there are few gangs in the upscale neighborhoods”.
They have always competed “for glory”. It is a question, continues Gérard Mauger, of “showing who is the strongest, it is a question of reputation”. Because, he says, “to fight, you have to have a territory”. “It is a logic of war. We invent a historical, old and more or less fictitious dispute, and we go to type with others. It’s a kind of game whose goal is to be the strongest, to make the law of your territory reign over that of others. »
The gangs “are in a dynamic of conflict, of appropriation of space”, adds Thomas Sauvadet, teacher-researcher at the University of Paris-Est Créteil. “They tend to take over building lobbies, cafes, train stations… This creates tension with residents, shopkeepers, the police, and with other gangs of young people. Whatever the situation, there will always be a pretext that will lead to confrontation. A sidelong glance or a small debt of money… The reason doesn’t matter. »
“This culture is not cool”
Gérard Mauger nevertheless remarks that the development of drug trafficking “has considerably brought the world of gangs closer to that of the world of professional delinquency”. The traffickers do not hesitate to recruit small hands within these groups of young people in disinheritance. Consequence: there are now more and more often, behind the fights between gangs, “economic issues”.
Thomas Sauvadet observes for his part that a “gang of 13 or 14 year old teenagers evolves today in a much more toxic environment than in the 1970s or 1980s”. The sociologist highlights in particular the aging, since the 1990s, of the members of certain gangs. “We have “old” young people who can be 25, 30, even 35 years old. Children grow up in families where the father is not really out of his gang. “A picture aggravated by “social difficulties, unemployment, precariousness, indebtedness”.
How to respond to this phenomenon? “There is a kind of trivialization of gang culture, which spreads among young people through series or songs. I think a lot of educators are a little picky and not responsive enough. We tend to say that it’s just an urban culture, a youth culture, ”regrets Thomas Sauvat. And the sociologist concludes: “I am campaigning for social workers, parents, a whole host of adults in contact with these young people, to identify certain signals very early on and find the words to explain to them that this culture is not cool. . »