Town hall and police headquarters agree to deploy cameras in a targeted manner

The installation of more than fifty video surveillance cameras in the underprivileged neighborhoods of Marseille, to meet “specific needs” of “environmental” security and security around schools, was announced on Wednesday by the city and the police headquarters. of the Bouches-du-Rhone.

“There are white areas in this city, especially in working-class neighborhoods and near schools”, where 55 cameras will be deployed to ensure “security around schools and [à] environmental security”, said the mayor of Marseille, Benoît Payan, during a visit to the urban supervision center (CSU) of the municipal police, where the images filmed 24 hours a day are analyzed.

The video surveillance cameras must be installed “mainly in the northern districts, because that is where there are needs”, explained the prefect of police, Frédérique Camilleri, specifying that the distribution will be done half along major thoroughfares and half in front of schools and nurseries.

Costs covered at 80% by the State

The implementation must meet “specific needs and specific subjects”, underlined the mayor, explaining that the images are both used by municipal services, in particular in the fight against illegal dumping of waste on public roads. , and by the police for their investigations.

The costs of the facilities will be 80% covered by the State, i.e. 1.7 million euros, as part of the “Marseille en grand” plan launched by President Emmanuel Macron in September 2021 to make up for the delays incurred by the second city ​​of France in multiple areas. Some 1,500 CCTV cameras are already deployed in Marseille, many under the former mandate of the right-wing majority of Jean-Claude Gaudin, beaten in the municipal elections in 2020. Their maintenance costs the town hall nearly 6 million euros each year. .

National police “autonomous” access to municipal cameras

Nearly a third of them are not useful, denounced Wednesday Yannick Ohanessian, security and municipal police assistant, regretting that “they were implemented in an” unreasonable “, according to a “clientele” logic. “. All of the national police services in Marseille will now have “autonomous” access to these images, specified the Prefect of Police, recalling that an average of 350 requests are made per month by these services to the CSU within the framework of their investigations.

This access will relieve municipal police officers, more than two-thirds of whose time at the CSU was devoted to processing national police investigations, said Yannick Ohanessian. By presenting his “Marseille en grand” plan, Emmanuel Macron announced the financing of 500 video surveillance cameras, without giving a deadline.

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