The standoff did not last long. Two and a half days after announcing its intention to transfer as soon as possible to the 12e arrondissement of Paris the camp for drug addicts set up since the end of September 2021 at Porte de La Villette (19e district), the prefect of police, Didier Lallement, gave up, Friday, January 28, this project vigorously contested by the elected officials of the left, of the right but also of La République en Marche (LRM). The railway wasteland of Bercy-Charenton will therefore not welcome crack users, this “poor man’s drug” which is wreaking havoc in the northeast of Paris. They will remain for the moment in the square where they are, on the edge of the capital and Seine-Saint-Denis.
In a press release published Friday noon, the prefect of police justifies this about-face by “the virulent opposition of the mayor of Paris to any project to move crack users” outside the square of the Porte de La Villette. And the fact that Anne Hidalgo has considered legal remedies, in particular a referral to the European Court of Human Rights (ECHR).
Situation of crack in Paris. See our press release. ⤵️ https://t.co/rYOA98yycp
Under these conditions, the prefect “can only note its impediment by the city to carry out the evacuation to the site of 12e district or to any other site, the town hall having refused to make the slightest proposal”, he writes, emphasizing the consequences of this immobility. The inhabitants of 19e arrondissement, Pantin and Aubervilliers (Seine-Saint-Denis) “must now expect a long occupation of the public space of the square, because it is an illusion to try to make them believe that quick and simple solutions are possible to allow these people to heal and recover. reinsert”, continues the prefect.
The opposition overtakes the Paris City Hall
However, the prefectural version is incomplete. The socialist mayor, Anne Hidalgo, and her team have certainly violently criticized the relocation of the camp announced by the prefect without the slightest consultation of elected officials, and promised to use all means to “to obstruct this baroque decision”. But the opposition to this measure went well beyond the Paris City Hall. Hervé Gicquel, the Les Républicains (LR) mayor of the town of Charenton-le-Pont (Val-de-Marne), neighboring the SNCF land envisaged in the 12e borough, had declared itself resolutely hostile to the project. LRM MP, Laetitia Avia, had also challenged the arrival of one or two hundred drug addicts in her constituency, and asked for the project to be suspended: “We must take care not to multiply points of insecurity in Paris, which is moreover in the district of Bercy, near facilities frequented by young people and families. »
Porte de La Villette, the situation, which was only to last ” A few days ” Where ” a few hours “, according to the Minister of the Interior, Gérald Darmanin, will therefore continue. “The prefect of police will continue to ask the City of Paris to clean this place of debris accumulated and transformed into huts, even if it means requisitioning it again as he has just done”, he said in his press release. Didier Lallement says, in fact, to refuse that“a shantytown is being built there, hiding traffic from the police”. But, beyond the short-term problem of the location of this “open scene” of drug consumption, nothing has been resolved. Projects to set up a course of care aimed at enabling drug addicts to get out of addiction seem more than ever at a standstill.