France has declared war on drug trafficking. The problem is that drug traffickers have also declared it to the French Republic. The count of deaths and injuries resulting from the settling of accounts between gangs has not stopped rising in recent weeks. And on Thursday night, a brawl involving between 50 and 60 people in Poitiers (central-eastern France) left five seriously injured and a teenager between life and death. The Minister of the Interior, Bruno Retailleau, visited the place and did not provide hot towels. “They are traffickers who use the most brutal means to settle scores and satisfy their greed. But this does not happen in South America, but in Rennes and Poitiers. We are at a turning point. We have to choose between a general mobilization and the mexicanization of the country.”
The Poitiers event, that is what Retailleau refers to, is not an isolated case. It adds to the episodes of extreme violence recorded in recent weeks in Marseille, Grenoble and Cavaillon, where drug trafficking gangs shamelessly challenge the police and the State. In the latter town, a branch of the DZ Mafia – an organization born in one of the northern neighborhoods of Marseille – burned several police vehicles and set fire to the police station after a raid in which a significant amount of drugs were seized. . In Marseille, a month ago, a 15-year-old teenager was stabbed fifty times and then burned alive after another settling of scores between gangs. And in Grenoble, new episodes of violence are recorded every week.
The events of this Thursday occurred in the neighborhood of Les Couronneriesof Poitiers, an area with a high density of officially protected and rehousing buildings inhabited by around 20,000 people and characterized by the strong presence of drug trafficking. In some of these districts, small cities built in the sixties on the outskirts of some French towns, drug traffickers have taken control of the entrances and exits, and it is very difficult for the police to act. The shooting broke out around 11:00 p.m. on the terrace of a hamburger restaurant in Coimbra Square in the city, which is in the Vienne prefecture. Five people were seriously injured, but at least 12 bullet wounds and the same number of shell casings were recorded in the restaurant’s facade, and a single weapon was found at the scene of the subsequent fight, according to the newspaper. The Figaro. One of the injured, Anis S., born in June 2009 and 15 years old, is between life and death, according to the police. He was shot in the head. At this time, no arrests have been made.
After the shooting, a mass fight broke out between about 60 individuals who pointed out others as being close to the perpetrators of the shooting. The police had to use tear gas to disperse them. Later, the prefect of Vienne, Jean-Marie Girier, told the network BFMTV that there were “several hundred people” around the location where the incident occurred. “Not everyone participated in the fight. But many were present,” he added. Shortly after the shooting, “the relatives of the brain-dead victim went to look for a person at his house to make him talk and find out who the shooter was and where he was,” some of the witnesses told Le Figaro. “Then, they took this person out of his house to take him to another apartment,” he adds, indicating that the police intervened “to stop what seemed like a kidnapping.”
In a statement published on her X account, the environmentalist mayor of Poitiers, Léonore Moncond’huy, condemned this “new episode of violence unacceptable for the neighborhood and the city.” “The youth of the victims and those involved is particularly shocking and worrying. I wish the injured a speedy recovery,” added the councilor, who has also called for “everyone’s responsibility to maintain calm in the city.” “The city requests that the investigation quickly clarify the precise circumstances of the incident and allow the perpetrators to be identified and arrested,” he concluded.
Since his appointment as Minister of the Interior, Retailleau has advocated turning the fight against drug trafficking into a “national cause”, which is why he has asked for a mobilization against drug trafficking similar to that carried out against terrorism. “We are going to establish a working groupto dismantle the drug trafficking ecosystem,” he declared on Friday, emphasizing the importance of a “comprehensive strategy” to try to stop this phenomenon.
