Montpellier (AFP)

By visiting a police station and then a popular district of Montpellier, Emmanuel Macron defends Monday on the ground his policy of "daily security", considered much too timid by the right one year before the presidential election.

This new offensive on the regal was launched by a long interview with Le Figaro in which the Head of State displays his firmness, at a time when France must face, according to him "a sharp increase in violence against people".

Accompanied by the Minister of the Interior Gérald Darmanin, Emmanuel Macron will seek to reassure the police officers with whom he will discuss at the Police headquarters from 11:15 am.

Taken over by the management of the Covid-19 crisis, he will speak for the first time on the subject since the launch in February of the "Beauvau de la sécurité" which he announced in the fall in the midst of the controversy over " police violence ".

This vast consultation should lay the foundations for an "ambitious internal security programming law by 2022", according to Prime Minister Jean Castex.

Emmanuel Macron is also expected to promote the law on "global security", adopted by Parliament last week despite a strong challenge from defenders of public freedoms.

In the interview with Le Figaro, the president has been defending step by step his strategy for four years, in particular his decision to increase the staff of the police by 10,000 members by the end of the five-year term, which he promises to lead. "until the end".

"Each French will see more blue on the ground in 2022 than in 2017. It reassures people, it deters delinquents. I am fighting for the right to a peaceful life," he assures us.

Thus, it should announce that 50 additional police officers will come to reinforce Montpellier by the end of 2002. The creation of a "war school with continuous training" for the police officers as well as the modernization of their uniform and the replacement of the cap by a cap will also be on the program.

- Narcobanditism -

In Le Figaro, he gives priority to the fight against drug trafficking, which "explodes" and "forms the economic matrix of violence in our country".

"Eradicating them by all means has become the mother of battles, since drugs innervate certain separatist networks but also everyday delinquency," he said.

"Narcobanditism is being emulated more and more in the sensitive cities" of the big cities of the South, like Montpellier, Avignon or Perpignan, underlined the director of the South zone of the judicial police Eric Arella at the beginning of the year.

The number of settlements has more than doubled in 2020, to 14 against 6, in the area of ​​the PJ of Montpellier.

After the police station, Emmanuel Macron will go to the Mosson district, north-east of Montpellier, to discuss crime prevention with those working in the field at the Social Center of the Caisse d'Allocations Familiales (CAF).

In this Republican Reconquest Quarter (QRR), 58.4% of the 21,650 inhabitants live below the poverty line and the unemployment rate has reached 47%.

On November 1, the neighborhood had been talked about when a shooting broke out there in broad daylight and a stray bullet had lodged itself in the wall of a little girl's room.

According to a recent study by the Elabe Institute, voters equally cite employment (31%), purchasing power (31%) and security (30%) as the themes that will matter most in their choice of the 2022 presidential election.

Among the candidates already launched, Xavier Bertrand (ex-LR) denounced Sunday the "total failure" of Emmanuel Macron on security.

Four years of "an explosion of delinquency, record levels of immigration and an unprecedented rise in Islamism", also lamented LR MP Eric Ciotti.

While Marine Le Pen (RN) ridiculed "the President of chaos, violence everywhere" which "sells us today 'peaceful life'".

"Nothing will be spared us," she said in a tweet Sunday evening.

© 2021 AFP