For three days, the police put pressure on around forty deal points in Marseille and other cities in the Bouches-du-Rhône.
Four times more resources were deployed than usual.
The operation was unprecedented in its scale.
An unprecedented punch operation against narcotics sales outlets in around thirty cities in the Bouches-du-Rhône, mainly in the northern districts of Marseille, was carried out last week.
It lasted for three days, we learned from a police source on Monday.
"The objective was to saturate the ground, to put a stop to all drug trafficking in the cities, since the point of deal concretely does not work when the police or gendarmes are present", explains the prefect of Bouches-du-Rhône police, Frédérique Camilleri.
Means "four times greater" than usual
Simultaneously, some 550 police officers and mobile gendarmes were thus mobilized, from Tuesday to Thursday, means "four times more" important "than what is used to in Marseille".
“It is the very principle of shelling that we have been experimenting with in Marseille for 18 months”, indicates the prefect, specifying that it was a question of “putting the means to carry out repeated operations in the cities in order to fight against the traffics “, but this time “on a completely new scale”.
These 45 security operations targeted around thirty cities, in Marseille but also Martigues, Port-de-Bouc and Arles.
The cities concerned were "chosen according to different criteria, the number of deal points, the intensity of traffic, but also the news of the city", favoring those where strong tensions have arisen lately, specified the Prefect, confirming that "the most important effort has been made on the estates in the northern districts of Marseille".
Thirty arrests
Conducted in the Bouches-du-Rhône at the request of Interior Minister Gérald Darmanin, this experiment resulted in the shutdown of more than twenty deal points for three days, "during the times when they are most profitable, in the afternoon and in the evening,” insisted Frédérique Camilleri.
More than 3,000 people were checked, more than 200 fined and around thirty arrested.
Nine stolen vehicles have been identified.
These "positive results should call for these operations to continue", in the department but "perhaps also elsewhere in France", underlined the prefect.
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