2024-03-25 13:37:07
France is stepping up its fight against the escalating drug trade in the country’s major cities. “Our fight against drugs and dealers is total,” said Interior Minister Gérald Darmanin on Monday. “We will now multiply the operations that we have been preparing for months to strike very hard.” There were 187 arrests in raids in Lille, Dijon and in the greater Lyon and Paris areas on Monday morning.
Police operations would also continue unabated in the port city of Marseille, which is particularly plagued by drug trafficking, where there were 230 arrests within just under a week. The police raids in France under the name “Place Nette” (clean place) are part of a strategy launched last summer that aims to eliminate around 4,000 drug sales points in the country.
For this purpose, police officers are deployed around the clock at the appropriate locations in the cities for a longer period of time. They are supposed to arrest drug dealers and prevent them from starting their business again after a short police operation a few meters away. In Marseille, the authorities spoke of an XXL-sized raid with around 900 police and customs officers deployed.
Drug gangs operate particularly in the high-rise developments of many large cities in France and make life difficult for the other residents. There are always violent clashes between gangs in which even uninvolved people lose their lives. The situation is particularly problematic in Marseille, where 49 people died last year in drug-related settlements. President Emmanuel Macron visited Marseille on Tuesday last week on the occasion of a major raid.
After the president’s visit, there was a stir over the reporting by the regional newspaper “La Provence”. Two days later, the newspaper had the headline “He’s gone and we’re still here…”, accompanied by a photo of suspected dealers and a police officer walking past. The newspaper’s management described the headline as ambiguous and misleading and suspended the editorial director. It gave the impression that the newspaper was quoting drug dealers, when in fact it was a statement from a local resident. The newspaper’s editors spoke of undue interference by the management and went on strike. Although the suspension has since been lifted, the newspaper did not appear on Monday either.
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