Europe 1 with AFP 3:27 p.m., September 26, 2021
Traveling to Pantin on Sunday, the president of the Île-de-France region attacked the City of Paris in the management of drug addicts in northeastern Paris. The presidential candidate advocates the opening of "a detoxification structure instead of opening shooting rooms which disturb public order everywhere in Paris".
Valérie Pécresse, president (Libres, ex-LR) of the Île-de-France region called on Sunday to find a "health response" for crack users, believing that "Seine-Saint-Denis is not a garbage can" to move the "problem" there, when moving to Pantin.
"We need a health response and not just a game of bonneteau," said Valérie Pécresse three days after the movement of crack users to Place Auguste Baron on the edge of the ring road between Paris and Seine-Saint-Denis.
"We moved the problem"
For Valérie Pécresse, "we moved the problem to Seine-Saint-Denis which is not a garbage can. (…) We cannot transfer all the problems of France, all the problems of Paris to Seine-Saint-Denis ".
The department "is a place which already concentrates a lot of social challenges", recalled the candidate to lead the right to the presidential election.
Seine-Saint-Denis "is obliged to build a wall to protect itself from Paris, to protect itself from drug addicts who are sent to it, it is not possible", estimates Valérie Pécresse in front of the inhabitants of Pantin who came in large numbers to challenge him on the situation.
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According to the elected, "the solution is to open a detoxification structure instead of opening shooting rooms which disturb public order everywhere in Paris and which create encouragement to consume".
The president of the Ile-de-France region said she was "ready to pay for centers", "ready to share the burden" with the City of Paris and the State.
Presence of "untenable" users for residents
In a letter sent on Saturday to the mayor of Paris, Anne Hidalgo, the prefect of the Île-de-France region, Marc Guillaume, and the prefect of police of Paris, Didier Lallement justified the displacement of drug addicts. They argue that "the State has assumed to organize (the) temporary solution" (place Auguste Baron), the presence of crack users on rue Riquet "in the immediate vicinity of many residents of schools" being "untenable".
They also justify the construction of a wall blocking a tunnel between Paris and Pantin, in order to prevent crack users from going to Seine-Saint-Denis.
This wall is "an essential protection for the inhabitants of Pantin", they write, adding that the Paris police headquarters "will ensure the security of the inhabitants of Paris and Seine-Saint-Denis".