“Mr Retailleau, like all the Ministers of the Interior that I have seen over the past ten years, they follow one another with the same logic. The chin thrust, zero tolerance, “you will see firmness with me”. It’s all nonsense,” declared the environmentalist mayor of Grenoble Éric Piolle this Monday on France Info. For the elected official, video protection “is of no use” in the fight against drug trafficking rampant in cities.
Grenoble, which has been plagued for several months by a series of bloody shootings linked to drug trafficking, itself has “120 cameras, six per km2 (but) that’s no use (…). It is part of the modern tools for city management but it is not the solution for drug trafficking. Here too, all the studies prove it,” he stressed.
A camera had notably been placed at the location where a 15-year-old boy was shot dead during a shooting last Tuesday but only lasted “twenty minutes” before it was rendered inoperative, according to him.
The same phenomenon in other cities
The phenomenon is the same in other cities such as Nice, Nantes, Valence or Toulouse and “everywhere, it is the same failure”, argued the mayor of Grenoble, calling for “progress on mental health issues” and to “talk about legalization”.
The police reinforcements promised over the years are moved according to requests, an “unacceptable” operation, while the “Place Nette” police operations only “disorganize (r) the traffic for a few hours”, he lamented.
Our file on Grenoble
Éric Piolle and his counterparts from the towns of Échirolles and Saint-Martin-d’Hères in the Grenoble agglomeration had written to the Ministers of the Interior and Justice to demand “100 additional national police officers and an unprecedented plan to fight against recidivism”. Bruno Retailleau responded by referring the Grenoble elected official to “his police powers” and the adoption of “security measures” including cameras.
Since the start of 2024, according to Grenoble prosecutor Eric Vaillant, around fifty gunshots linked to drug trafficking causing six deaths have been recorded in this city.
