If crack trafficking is one day eradicated in Paris – as promised by the Minister of the Interior – we may owe it to this kind of case closed by the 2nd judicial police district (2nd DPJ). On Friday, the Bobigny Criminal Court (Seine-Saint-Denis) sentenced to seven years in prison a 50-year-old man suspected of making the link between “traditional” city traffickers and “modous”, these small dealers specializing in the sale of crack, in particular Porte de la Villette.
A heavy sentence. “Cocaine suppliers sometimes only get one or two years,” notes a source close to the investigation. But it is also true that for a year the Bobigny court has been hitting hard.
In any case, the profile of this trafficker is “atypical”, according to the same source. This inhabitant of Drancy, who left Senegal for France forty years ago, would have links with organized crime. In the past, he had been arrested by the banditry repression brigade for car trafficking between France and Africa.
An exceptional seizure of 1.2 kilos of crack
This time, the man admitted to being the owner of a suitcase filled with 1.2 kilos of crack. An exceptional seizure for this drug. “I do not know if we have already seized so much crack at once in Île-de-France”, digs into his memory an official. The drugs were recovered last July during a search by the police of the 2nd DPJ at the home of the suspect’s sister-in-law, in Bobigny (Seine-Saint-Denis).
In police custody, he explained that he had confiscated this product from a dealer who owed him 12,000 euros. He had no intention of selling this drug, he had sworn. Cutting products had also been seized at his home in Drancy. For months, investigators dissected his movements between simple Parisian “modous” and traffickers well known to the police.
“The arrest of modous most often results in minimal seizures, analyzes a police source. Above all, the dealer is replaced almost immediately. When we manage to go back to a supplier, we disrupt the business much more”.