"Breaking down the ghettos will be my priority, it will take ten years, but it is essential to avoid areas of lawlessness and non-France," said Ms. Pécresse during a press point at the end of a trip to Meaux.
We must replace these ghettos "by neighborhoods on a human scale" with "social diversity", she added, after having visited a tower soon to be demolished in the Beauval district, which is the subject of a gigantic urban renewal plan.
"For that we must bring back the security of everyday life" and "we must see the municipal police as the third police force in our country", added Ms. Pécresse, received by the mayor of Meaux Jean-François Cope who himself strongly developed its municipal police.
While Nicolas Sarkozy had abolished the proximity police set up at the crossroads of the 1990s and 2000s under Lionel Jospin, Ms. Pécresse pleaded Wednesday for "a real proximity police, armed, compulsory, in all cities of more than 10,000 inhabitants ".
According to her, the national police and the gendarmerie "are no longer hostile to this cooperation".
But to develop "complementarity" it will be necessary to give "more resources and more skills" to the municipal police, she added after having visited the premises of the municipal police of the city.
A few hours before the televised intervention of the Head of State, she estimated that Emmanuel Macron would "no doubt explain to us that all is well. But the French feel a constant rise in insecurity".
"This question of authority is key, I will put it at the heart of my campaign" with "common sense solutions," said Ms. Pécresse, reiterating her desire to increase the penalties in the most criminogenic districts of the 62 " Republican reconquest zones ".
"I claim to throw a paving stone in the pond and to say + let's double the penalties in these areas + to really kick in the anthill," said Ms. Pécresse.
© 2021 AFP