"I no longer know how to do, what to do, I spend my time keeping watch in and in front of my shop and the employees are afraid, but it's not my job", explains the manager of a street business. des Grandes Arcades, rue de l'hypercentre in Strasbourg.

Repeated thefts, squatting around and even sometimes in front of the windows, traders denounce via a petition an environment "not really favorable" to business.

“Everyone is pissed off!

protests the shopkeeper of a ready-to-wear store at the initiative of this paper petition which collected around sixty signatures from colleagues in a few hours.

Main grievance, “the thefts, endlessly” she assures.

Why ?

“We no longer have police in the city centre.

It has changed.

However, I have been here for 13 years, underlines the exasperated manager.

Before, there were very regular visits from the municipal police, from the BAC.

We called them and they intervened immediately.

Now we don't see them anymore, they are somewhere else and we are being looted every day.

“His “theft rate” she assures, which “had already increased last year”, has almost doubled in one year.

“At the end of August, we were robbed by a group of five people.

They did lots of shopping with big bags.

They passed very quickly, returned, helped themselves, and left.

It was very organized.

Thieves know that in the city center there is no one to stop them, it's party time!, says a shopkeeper.

There are people who do drugs in front of the store door, sometimes they come in and do their little business and leave.

European capital?

But where are we?

“ Problems of insecurity, but also of hygiene and occupation of public space.

Some merchants say “no longer what to do, who to contact”.

"Pedestrian patrols to meet traders"

Contacted, the deputy mayor of Strasbourg in charge of trade, Joël Steffen, tempers.

If he says he is alerted and made aware of these theft phenomena, "obviously by people who have found breaches and who are well organized", the elected official recalls that even if there is good coordination between the municipal and national police , it is to the latter that “returns the work of investigation, dismantling of the network”.

The elected official recognizes that “it can be exhausting for the traders and inhabitants of the rue des Grandes Arcades, one of the most commercial in the Grand-Est in terms of flow”.

Nadia Zourgui, deputy mayor in charge of public peace, municipal police, crime prevention and mediation, explains that since 2020, she has asked that there be "more foot patrols again, that they go even more to traders.

It is sure, it is less visible than the cars of the municipal police.

But we are here.

We had targeted the Grand-Rue because there were a lot of problems, but I see that it has moved.

The elected official underlines the difficulty of recruiting police officers.

"But it's true, like in all big cities, we have a real increase in thefts in stores".

The petition sent to the mayor

Alerted, the national police would work to set up support for traders, even if this has not been confirmed to us by the prefecture.

Nevertheless, multiple police operations have been carried out in recent days, but in the station district.

As for squats or people who sleep in front of the windows, Joël Steffen concedes that this remains complex and time-consuming to manage.

“There are different kinds of situations that require different support.

Some in the social field, sometimes in psychiatry” for extreme cases.

And "who are sometimes of foreign origin, which further complicates the process of attempting to take charge".

Delicate and long?

Nadia Zourgui confirms: “I asked the police and the team of social animators to intervene so that they leave the place before the shops open.

She continues, “We cleaned up a lot of busy places.

With the Human Prevention service and the police, we identified all the black spots.

I asked that every morning, between 6 a.m. and 8 a.m., we go to see the homeless, that we offer them a coffee, a tea, to try to send them to a day structure so that they can stay warm, and we clean up right away.

But it is not easy”.

While waiting for better days, the traders have just sent a letter and the signatures of the petition to the mayor of Strasbourg Jeanne Barseghian and to the police, hoping to see things change “quickly and permanently”.

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