2024-03-18 17:38:29
FIGAROVOX/TRIBUNE – The particularly violent shooting in the Blosne district, on the night of March 9 to 10, is a sign of a profound deterioration of this city over the past ten years, believes the former member of Parliament for Rennes, who points the finger at the responsibility of elected.
Florian Bachelier is a lawyer and former LREM deputy for the 8th constituency of Ille-et-Vilaine. He was first quaestor of the National Assembly.
Rennes experienced another traumatic shooting last week. Traumatizing by its recurrence, its intensity and its duration. By chance and the professional excellence of RAID officials, no deaths were reported. The fact remains that the residents of this neighborhood can’t take it anymore and many of them want to leave. More than worried, the people of Rennes are angry today.
The apparent paradox is that these shootings are a consequence of the heavy dismantling and arrest operations finally carried out in Rennes by the State. The State is in fact trying to regain control of a situation that it took time, since Paris, to properly measure. These “clearance” operations destabilize drug trafficking networks and this leads to “turf wars” between gangs and the settling of scores that go with them. We can say that these convulsions in Rennes are, at the same time, the mark of a national desire – late but now accepted – to put an end to increasingly violent criminal actions and the bill of a culpable abandonment of local policies of security for ten years.
The good news is that when there is political will, there is a path. The bad news is that if there is no will – pursued nationally, judicially coherent and restored locally – then the fall will continue and there will be deaths. The first question that we must all ask ourselves here and now – politician, citizen, voter and abstainer – is simple and basic: “How did we collectively and specifically get here in Rennes?” Not to designate someone responsible or guilty but to question the choices that we will have to collectively make one day in Rennes.
This is not a problem of budgetary resources but of political choices: cycle paths, fairs and other wooden cabin competitions are prioritized over the safety of residents.
Florian Bachelier
Over the past ten years, this city has experienced a very sharp decline in the level of protection of its residents. It’s bad everywhere but in Rennes it’s very bad. To put it more clearly, Rennes is one of the French cities where the basic security of residents is no longer perfectly guaranteed. It’s bad everywhere but in Rennes it’s very bad. And traffickers of all kinds (drugs, weapons and human beings) have perfectly understood this and integrated it into their business plan.
Several factual findings specific to Rennes firstly show municipal underinvestment in security:
- Municipal police numbers are among the lowest in France;
- These police officers are neither armed nor properly equipped and are generally despised by their employer;
- The level of video protection is ridiculously low;
- There is no serious coordination between local and national security actors;
- The level of violent attacks has exploded, the judicial response is particularly weak;
- The emergency rooms at Pontchaillou University Hospital and many public schools have been sounding the alarm for years;
- The link – obviously not exclusive – between unregulated immigration and criminal networks is the local political taboo par excellence. In reality, everyone who opens their eyes knows that real/fake unaccompanied minors, particularly Moroccans, are recruited as cheap labor in local “fours” (deal points) or end up enslaved by the networks Eastern European mafiosi (particularly in the Georgian networks). These dramatic realities are not compatible with the “no border” ready-to-think of trade fair elected officials;
- The fundamental issue of security is politically understood by the mayor and thus treated by her various officials as “an extreme right issue”, excluding any serious collective mobilization beyond political sensitivities. The simple political debate is refused by local elected officials and in a less avowed way by a good part of the local editorial staff of West France ;
- This is not a problem of budgetary resources but of political choices: cycle paths, fairs and other wooden cabin competitions are prioritized over the safety of residents.
Add to this elements that may a priori seem distant from drug trafficking but which, cumulatively, have over ten years gradually contributed to generating an atmosphere specifically favorable to it. Public power – as a whole – has shown its weakness through a few symbols. First, the abandonment of the ZAD of Notre-Dame-des-Landes – the symbol in the West of the failure of the State – not only demonstrated that a violent minority could lay down the law but also trained generations of local thugs, wasting a lot of time and energy for the various police, justice and intelligence forces. Then the abandonment of the University of Rennes 2, incapable of merging with Rennes 1, ransacked and blocked each year by a minority to the detriment of the quality of the majority’s diplomas. Not to mention the abandonment of a growing number of streets to drug dealers, hooded thugs, anti-capitalist raiders and other talentless taggers. Let those who complain about the filth of Paris come here. Squares transformed into miracle courts and open-air deal points, entire neighborhoods bypassed when night falls, wooden barricades on businesses. And we got used to it… And finally, the abandonment of the Blosne district which concentrates the poverty of a city whose rents have exploded and which has gradually recommunitized its towers with new arrivals and where drug trafficking allowed until then to buy social peace at a low price, the district being the most abstentionist in Rennes.
A final element of local responsibility perhaps also lies in the profile of drug users. Locally, it is most often the children of the privileged classes of the city center who can afford the doses which allow them to have the impression of having a blast between two anti-capitalist general assemblies.
Florian Bachelier
This symbolic weakness was doubled in the local political expression of the abandonment of the great principles, which make up our national community, by the mayor and her EELV allies. The republican order was thus abandoned, in particular by participating in public seminars on the theme of the police who kill or in demonstrations where chants are “everyone hates the police”by subsidizing associations training in the occupation or “guerrilla”, by financing associations collaborating with smugglers, by uttering speeches that are at best ambiguous or at worst incendiary, inciting violent protest or justifying it a posteriori. And secularism was abandoned, against a backdrop of postcolonial guilt and a paradoxically neocolonial pure electoral strategy, in particular by quietly posing for photos alongside little veiled girls and by authorizing the wearing of the burkini in municipal swimming pools. All of this has contributed over ten years to particularly degrade republican authority and order. And each time, in each place where public power is weak, mafia networks rush in.
A final element of local responsibility perhaps also lies in the profile of drug users. Because – let us remember clearly – without financing consumers, there is no market and therefore no mafias. Locally, it is most often the children of the privileged classes of the city center who can afford the doses which allow them to have the impression of having a blast between two anti-capitalist general assemblies. In reality, it is mainly a question of overcoming boredom and their educational deficiencies.
Also read: Deadly shootings in Marseille: “There are cycles of violence that last five to ten years”
Culturally and politically – and to put it modestly because the generation with responsibilities or comments has not become aware of the lethal evolution of narcotics over the last ten years – the subject of drugs was not considered to be a priority. really seriously mobilize everyone, beyond political contingencies. It was either a subject of jokes or a subject of concern for the “right-wing reaction”. And in any case, not a good political niche in Rennes. And if Rennes is not the only city that is overtaken by reality, it is part of the worst club in terms of security. It can also be noted that this club brings together the cities which voted the most for LFI-Nupes in 2022 (more than 36.3% for Rennes, almost 70% abstention in municipal elections).
Ten years of denial, ten years of ideological compromises, ten years of political calculations accompany the fall which some still seem to be surprised by or not to see. Ten years of small cowards with big consequences. Rennes is the political laboratory that announces what happens when elected officials kneel. Local and national. And if we want to be fair, when voters, particularly in these neighborhoods, decide to no longer decide. But politics is above all for those who can least. The final question must therefore be whether there is anything left to do but flee the city. A thousand times yes. But we urgently need – to paraphrase Charles Péguy – to start with “say what we see and, more difficult, see what we see”.
It’s not a right-wing question, it’s not a left-wing question. On the other hand, it is a question of abstentionists and resignations, of the responsibility of citizens and above all of parents.
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