"This is my thirteenth year in office, I never thought that would happen." While returning home Monday evening, Laurent Simon, mayor of Chalifert, in Seine-et-Marne, was violently attacked by one of his constituents. An assault with bare hands against the city councilor for a story ... of parking. The attacker could not stand that his neighbors park on "his" sidewalk, he had decided to put rocks in front of his home. The initiative was not to the taste of this unlabeled mayor, who chose to file a complaint to have them removed, particularly given the parking difficulties on this axis.
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A broken rib and a bruised brow bone
But the attacker does not intend to stop there and decides Monday evening to follow the chosen one by car while he returns home. He passes him and forces him to stop in the main street of Chalifert. He then hits him with a series of punches. The aedile comes out with a broken rib and a bruised brow bone. An attack that is actually the last chapter of an old neighborhood feud. The assailant's car had already been found set on fire in his backyard.
233 attacks against mayors since the start of the year
This violence against city councilors is far from new, worse, it is on the increase: since January, there have been 233 attacks against mayors, an increase of 14% in one year. A statistic which "shocks" Laurent Simon. “At some point, the answers will have to be firm, otherwise it will amplify,” he predicts. For its part, the Association of Mayors of Île-de-France (Amif) denounced the violence against city councilors and called in a press release for exemplary sanctions.
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A call that the Prime Minister may have heard, since Jean Castex announced that he would take up this subject next Tuesday, during an interministerial meeting in Matignon which is to bring together in particular the ministers of Justice and Interior, Éric Dupond-Moretti and Gérald Darmanin.