Eric Arella, the very discreet director of the judicial police for the southern zone, explains this Wednesday exclusively on the radio on Europe 1 how his teams are facing a recent outbreak of violence in Marseille.
Three men were shot dead in the city last weekend and the start of summer was particularly deadly.
In Marseille, the last weekend was particularly deadly.
Three men lost their lives there, shot dead in the middle of the street in the northern neighborhoods, so-called "sensitive" neighborhoods.
The three cases are unrelated, but these three homicides over a very short period of time illustrate the outbreak of violence facing the police in Marseille and its surroundings this summer.
In the past month, 10 people have been killed out of a total of 17 since the start of the year.
The majority of these homicides correspond to settling of scores in the world of narco-banditism.
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"A conjunction of several elements"
Because in Marseille, drug trafficking networks are legion. And they change frequently. "It's a changing environment", confirms Eric Arella, the very discreet director of the judicial police for the southern zone, who speaks exclusively on the radio on Europe 1. For him, this important and recent figure of the number of 'homicides "is certainly a conjunction of several elements." He cites among the explanations "exits from prison", "betrayals" within trafficking and "a desire to resume certain points which have been dismantled, destabilized by our action". "And here, nature abhors a vacuum," he says.
In the case of settling accounts, the modus operandi has partly evolved over the years.
"For several years, we have had a plurality of authors who are often in cars and sometimes equipped with assault rifles," explains Éric Arella.
"It's a weapon that is not always very well mastered. Suddenly, we sometimes, fortunately not too often, have collateral damage. This is the case of the 17-year-old girl who was killed. not very long ago in the town of Septèmes-les-Vallons ", near Marseille, he illustrates.
Moreover, drug trafficking is not the only context in which homicides occur.
This is also the case for cigarette trafficking, which is however disconnected from drug trafficking.
26 score settlements foiled since 2016
Despite this brutal outbreak of violence during this summer, the trend would be rather downward in Marseille, with one settling of accounts per month since 2017 against two per month in previous years. A result obtained in particular thanks to the work of the Marseille judicial police, according to Éric Arella. "We organized as a priority to ensure to strike blows. Up to a point that we did not imagine. We tried to anticipate actions of settling of scores," he said. Since 2016, his teams have thus foiled 26 settlements. The clearance rate for these cases is high in Marseille. It has risen to nearly 50% since 2013, compared to 35% nationally.