Mayor Anne Hidalgo assured Tuesday that “tomorrow”, Wednesday, “there will be no more drug addicts in the garden” of Eole, reiterating her commitment to return to the inhabitants by the end of June this park in the north. east of Paris.
“Tomorrow, the garden will once again become a garden for residents, for families. There will be no more drug addicts in the garden, ”said Anne Hidalgo. on LCI. “I set a limit” at the end of June, she recalled, without giving details on a possible evacuation or on where the drug addicts would go.
Police reinforcement in the park
Contacted by AFP, his entourage clarified that the promise was valid from Wednesday morning, without providing further details. According to a source familiar with the matter, Anne Hidalgo confirmed to residents that the Eole Gardens would no longer welcome crack users after June 30.
The park will in theory be impossible for them to access thanks to the “reinforcement of the human presence and the police officers” whose mission will be “to ensure that no one enters the park” with a knife, in an “unstable state” or by “having a behavior likely to endanger”, added this source to AFP. An “activity program” for local residents is also planned in the park.
Towards the opening of a place of care?
However “we are not going to pass on June 30 from shadow to light”, it is an “intermediate sequence”, added this source, according to which “between making them disappear miraculously and leaving them in free wheel, it there is an in-between ”.
According to Anne Hidalgo, “the question that is asked is the treatment. I asked the government to open together a place “to take care of them but,” for the moment, there is a difference of views within the government “between those who want places of accompaniment and” d ‘others who explain that it is enough to move the problem, ”added the mayor. “I would like us to open a place that comes to the aid of drug addicts because we cannot just evacuate the subject without dealing with it”, repeated the one who had written to Prime Minister Jean Castex at the beginning of June to ask for “new devices of care adapted to the problems of crack users ”.
In order to relieve the inhabitants of the Stalingrad district, crack users have been grouped together since mid-May, in the evening, in this place that drug addicts used to frequent during the day before migrating to Stalingrad, 500 meters away, overnight.
The public garden is open to them until 1 a.m., causing tension in the neighborhood. On Saturday, drug addicts were targeted by fireworks mortar fire.