A police operation in the Bellevue district.

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F. Elsner / 20Minutes

  • Firearms settlements were cut in half in 2020. The volume of weapons seized has also increased.

  • Containment facilitates this good result.

    But the efforts of the police and the judiciary pay off in the end, says the prosecutor.

Admittedly, the confinement allowed a "significant drop" in the acts of delinquency in the spring.

Despite this context, after a dark year in 2019, the results for 2020 in terms of the fight against drug trafficking, arms trafficking and gunfire is "quite satisfactory" in Nantes, announced Thursday the prosecutor of the République de Nantes on the occasion of the meeting of the Local Group for the Treatment of Delinquency (GLTD), which brings together the police, the judiciary and the town hall.

The settling of scores recorded, "almost always linked to drug trafficking", illustrate this trend: numbering 35 since January, they have fallen by half after having experienced "four consecutive years of increase" until the peak of 2019 marked by 64 shootings and three deaths.

The number of weapons seized in 2020 (around one hundred including 54 long guns including the famous Kalashnikovs) is also "ten times higher than in 2016".

More presence, more tools available

"This result is the product of the tireless work of the police and the judiciary," said prosecutor Pierre Sennès.

He explains that services have been "strengthened", particularly in the police.

That the investigators "attack the traffic in its entirety, from the head of the network to the small street deals".

The deputy mayor in charge of security, Pascal Bolo, praises “shared and coordinated work” and notes that the police are “investing more” in the neighborhoods.

He considers that the installation of video surveillance cameras and the creation of a House of public tranquility are “powerful aids” which end up “paying”.

Pascal Gontier, deputy interregional director of the judicial police, notes the mechanical benefits of the judicial work carried out after the series of settling of scores last year (45 suspects indicted and 35 imprisoned): “We can think that people in pre-trial detention are much less harmful in remand centers than outside ”.

Drug trafficking is reorganizing itself

All is not rosy, however.

The Bellevue, Dervallières and Malakoff districts remain those which “concern the authorities the most”.

In the Nantes-north districts, a "resurgence of drug trafficking" is observed.

The development of home delivery of drugs, less visible than the street deal, and the sale of new products, such as the drug Rivotril, are worrying.

As well as the supply of weapons, thanks to the channels of Eastern Europe or the burglaries among collectors.

“We must not fall into angelism.

All of this is an eternal restart, ”warns Pierre Sennès.

“There is still a long way to go,” concedes Pascal Bolo.

Despite announced recruitments, the unions still denounce, moreover, "insufficient" police personnel and "overwhelmed" teams, in particular within the branch of the judicial police in Nantes.

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  • Weapons

  • Drug

  • Society

  • security

  • Delinquency

  • Nantes