They are everywhere. Since last Monday, the Oise department has been on red alert for a particularly targeted storm. If ordinary mortals feel nothing more than a light breeze, bordering on pleasant, delinquents and criminals are hit head-on by large gusts tinged with blue. “Tempête 60” is a vast operation carried out by the Oise departmental gendarmerie group (GGD) which aims to crack down on crime, organized or not, by searching for suspects even in cellars if necessary.
What is “Storm 60”?
Launched on November 13, the operation aims to “fight against all forms of delinquency”. It is commanded by the head of the Oise gendarmerie group under the authority of the department prefect and in close collaboration with the prosecutors of Senlis, Beauvais and Compiègne.
As the gendarmes explained, the targets are multiple, but the military still tends to concentrate on certain objectives: “drug trafficking”, the dismantling of “organized crime networks”, the fight “against attacks to goods” or against the “underground economy”.
What device?
To slip through the cracks, the only solution was to be far from the department. And even. Because according to the departmental gendarmerie group, more than a thousand soldiers are participating in the operation, all specialties combined. Mobile gendarmes, Psig, cyber gendarmes, GIGN, dog units and other acronyms that law enforcement loves.
Major resources which allowed the military to fire on all fronts. In addition to numerous traffic control operations, the military also took over areas deemed sensitive in the department. The cellars and common areas of the buildings of the ZSP of Méru-Chambly or Noyon, the districts of Val d’Aunette, in Senlis, and Kennedy in Crépy-en-Valois, the cities of Chambly, Clermont, Saint-Just- en-Chaussée, Saint-Maxmin and Lamorlaye.
Blue was also used in many fast food establishments, to uncover hidden work or breaches of health and safety rules. “Tempête 60” was also an opportunity to initiate arrest operations for investigations opened upstream, for freight theft or scams.
Does the end justify the means?
In terms of results, it must be recognized that this show of force bore fruit. In a press release, published last Friday, the GGD welcomed “thirty-two arrests, including sixteen prolonged police custody beyond 48 hours”. In five days, between the 13th and the 17th, the various operations led to eighteen searches allowing “the seizure of six firearms and more than two kilograms of narcotics”.
Last Wednesday, for example, 140 gendarmes, four platoons of mobile gendarmes, a helicopter and several dog teams descended on the cities of Méru, Chambly, Clermont, Saint-Just-en-Chaussée, Saint-Maxmin and Lamorlaye. In addition to the panic generated among drug dealers, the soldiers were able to arrest four suspects and seize drug and bladed weapons.
The day before, in the cellars and lobbies of buildings in the Nacre district and the city center, still in Méru, the gendarmes arrested two individuals and seized more than two kilos of narcotics. The same day, the gendarmes arrested a man in the Paris region who had defrauded several elderly people in Senlis last April.