Inès Zeghloul / Photo credit: Nicolas TUCAT / AFP 10:08 a.m., March 8, 2024
While senators are visiting Marseille to measure the extent of drug trafficking, the police, on the front line, feel powerless.
At the microphone of Europe 1, a police officer testifies to this distress, and the discomfort that this causes in the profession.
Marseille, a narco-city?
Since Thursday, a group of senators has been traveling to the Marseille city, as part of a Senate commission of inquiry to measure the extent of drug trafficking in France's second largest city.
They must meet justice officials, families of victims of drug trafficking, and members of the police.
They have been expressing their distress for many months.
Europe 1 collected the testimony of a police officer who, on condition of anonymity, talks about the helplessness of the entire profession in the face of traffickers in Marseille.
“It’s complicated to believe that things will change”
“The fight against drugs seems insurmountable to me at the moment. We can say that we are trying to empty the Mediterranean Sea with a teaspoon,” the police officer immediately regrets.
"Anyway, two or three hours later, the traffic starts again and others take their place. It's demoralizing, it's demotivating, it's endless. Given the extent of the traffic and other , it’s complicated on our scale to believe that things will change,” he breathes.
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On the side of the police, uneasiness is increasingly present.
This police officer notably witnessed the suicide of one of his colleagues.
Faced with this situation, he wonders about the rest of his career.
"If I had to do it again, maybe I wouldn't do it. Maybe I would go into another profession. I still have the motivation to be out on patrol and in the field. But afterward, for how long, I don't know", he fears at the microphone of Europe 1.