2024-03-07 03:00:01
View of the playground of the Georges-Bruguier school, March 1, 2024, in Nîmes. JULIA DE COOKER FOR M LE MAGAZINE DU MONDE
This March 4, in Nîmes, the students of the Georges-Bruguier school are trickling back in front of the green gate, a little more numerous than the previous week. From now on, they must pass in front of municipal police officers, a new security cordon put in place ten days earlier, before entering the large deserted courtyard. Still a good half of the children are missing. In the Gard, while classes have resumed since February 26, many families from Chemin-Bas-d’Avignon no longer dare to leave their children in the school in this sensitive district, besieged for several years by drug trafficking. narcotics.
On February 8, a double shooting broke out in the middle of the afternoon in the street alongside the establishment, at a time when a class was returning by bus from a school trip and the kindergarteners were at recess. On February 20, a 39-year-old man, known to the police, lost his life, shot dead at a deal point in front of his 8-year-old son. On edge, exasperated, a majority of the teaching team did not return to school after the winter holidays. Fourteen of the sixteen teachers were on leave, at least until March 8, for an accident on duty.
Parents no longer want to experience this daily ordeal when they have to take their children to the gates of Georges-Bruguier. “We can’t take it anymore, testifies a group of mothers on condition of anonymity for fear of reprisals. Shootings take place in broad daylight and it is becoming almost habitual. At any time, we could be hit by a stray bullet. » Fazia, a grandmother, continues: “The other day, a bullet landed in the passenger side headrest of a mother’s car with children inside. It’s not livable! »
The feeling of imminent danger
The white facades of this school group, which looks like an administrative building from the 1960s, built in a U shape with a large courtyard in the middle, look grim. The three-meter high anti-intrusion fence, installed in 2021 all around the establishment to prevent drug dealers from entering inside, causes, among young and old, the permanent feeling of imminent danger. As if carelessness no longer had its place.
Nadia, 38, a student of Bruguier in the 1980s, now a mother, is saddened: “When I was little, there weren’t these fences that high. It looks like a prison now. The mothers were talking on the sidewalk, playing, laughing. I have never heard the “Arah” [le signal entre guetteurs pour prévenir de l’arrivée des policiers dans le quartier] in class, even though my children are used to it. My 8-year-old son, who heard the shooting, has nightmares every night. »
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