• Place Stalingrad has become a hotspot for crack traffic in Paris, especially since the evacuation of Crack Hill and the Rosa Parks tunnel.

  • From now on, crack users can no longer access Place Stalingrad and are confined to the Jardin d'Eole then to rue Ricquet.

  • This new plan is provisional, confirms sources.

The project has been under consideration since February, the heightened tensions with residents in recent weeks have accelerated its deployment. Since Monday, crack users no longer have access to Place Stalingrad, in the 19th arrondissement of Paris, where they gathered every evening, causing numerous disturbances to public order. "This device provides for a strengthening of police patrols day and night to prevent drug addicts from stagnating in this square, at the foot of apartment buildings,"

a police source

told 20 minutes

.

Instead, this new crack plan, drawn up by the police headquarters and the town hall, plans to give users, estimated at nearly 150 in the neighborhood, the possibility of staying until 1 a.m. (instead of 20 hours) in the Jardins d'Eole park, located about 500 meters from Stalingrad Square. “It is not only a place that they know well since many drug addicts spend their day in the upper part of this park, but it is also an area where there are relatively few residents and where the nuisance will therefore be less significant. », Continues this same source. After 1 a.m., crack users, a large part of whom are wandering around and live in the street, are confined to rue Ricquet, which borders the park and then spans the railroad tracks.A street with few apartment buildings but close to areas of dense housing.

"We must measure the exasperation of local residents"

"The police headquarters is committed to containing this population in this portion of the street to avoid any postponement effect," said the PS mayor of the 19th arrondissement, François Dagnaud. That night, in any case, it worked out well. "For the city councilor, this solution, far from being a miracle cure, is for the moment" the least bad of all ". The only one, in his eyes, which will make it possible to find a "semblance of normal life" in the short term. Earlier this month, some residents of the neighborhood, exasperated by the screams and fights, threw fireworks mortars in the direction of a crowd of "crackers". A "cry for help", in the eyes of the chosen one. "We must measure the exasperation of residents who no longer sleep at night because of howls and settling of scores, the feeling of permanent insecurity ..."

But at the town hall as at the prefecture, we assure it, this adjustment is only temporary.

Above all, it does not aim to fight against traffic but to bring back serenity around Stalingrad Square, while the reopening of cinemas and terraces are looming on Wednesday.

Proof of this is the decree taken Monday evening by the prefect of police to prohibit the distribution of food and syringes by associations at the level of the square but these can still take place at the Jardins d'Eole.

“Of course that shifts the problem but to less populated areas.

For now, we have to admit that nothing that has been put in place has made it possible to eliminate the problem, ”insists François Dagnaud.

The fight against crack in the dead end

For a year, however, the fight against crack trafficking has intensified. Significant resources have been deployed: teams patrol 24 hours a day on Stalingrad Square but also around it, urban developments have been carried out - the benches have been removed to prevent consumers from stagnating, public lighting improved for facilitate the work of officials in the field. Legal information is also regularly opened in an attempt to identify the main actors and since June 2020, the consumers arrested have been systematically referred and are offered a therapeutic injunction accompanied by a ban on appearing in the north-east of Paris.

In a report published in January, the fruit of two years' work, Inserm and the French Observatory for Drugs and Drug Addiction (OFDT) recommended the opening of day and night reception facilities for crack users. but also four inhalation rooms like the “shooting rooms” in order to limit consumption in public spaces and better supervise care.

The City of Paris is in favor, just like the mayor of the arrondissement, the police and judicial authorities less: they fear the creation of places of settlement of drug addicts.

Society

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Paris

Paris: Place Stalingrad, tension mounts between residents and crack users

  • Paris

  • Drug traffic

  • Drug

  • Substance addiction