Plenty of French cities have imposed night-time curfews on younger individuals following a spate of violence linked to drug trafficking.
Nîmes within the south was the newest to herald measures, which authorities stated have been meant to stop underneath 16s from being “uncovered to violence” and to “comprise tensions”. Further police items can even be despatched in.
Over the course of the final month a number of shootings – one in broad daylight – left one particular person lifeless and several other injured.
Final week the physique of a 19-year-old man was discovered partially burned on the outskirts of Nîmes.
Saying the curfew – in drive between 21:00 and 06:00 – mayor Jean-Paul Fournier stated the scenario had turn out to be “untenable” and that drug traffickers had created a “local weather of worry and terror”.
Deputy mayor Richard Schieven stated the curfew would shield minors not concerned within the drug commerce “but in addition these aged 12 or 13 who’re exploited by drug traffickers”.
Béziers, 120km (75 miles) to the south-west, has had a curfew in place for youngsters underneath 13 between 23:00 and 06:00 since final 12 months and expanded it to underneath 15s in sure areas final March. “No 10-year-old out on the road at 02:00 is as much as something however mischief,” stated mayor Robert Ménard in 2024.
Regardless of the measures, Béziers continues to be tormented by violence. On the weekend balaclava-clad youths lured police after which attacked them with fireworks, native media reported.
The same incident occurred in Limoges in southwestern France. The town has additionally imposed curfew measures for underneath 13s at some point of the summer time holidays – however following violence involving 100 individuals on the weekend Mayor Émile Roger Lombertie stated the outcomes of the measures have been “not good”.
“We had disturbances by younger individuals, no one managed to intercept and arrest them, and the curfew was ineffective,” Lombertie stated, including that extra police was wanted to implement the measures.
Two years in the past the there was outrage in Nimes when a 10-year-old boy was killed by a bullet within the Pissevin space of town.
The newest developments affirm a rising development that has seen drug violence broaden past Marseille – the long-time epicentre of gang wars in France.
Based on the inside ministry, 110 individuals died in France and greater than 300 others have been wounded in drug-related violence in 2024.
Inside Minister Gérard Darmanin and Justice Minister Bruno Retailleau have lengthy insisted on the necessity to struggle the scourge of the medication commerce.
Earlier this 12 months they steered a invoice by means of parliament which resulted in two maximum-security jails for drug barons, a brand new, devoted department of the prosecutors’ workplace, additional powers for investigators, and a particular, protected standing for informers.
Darmanin stated on Tuesday that “the primary 17 drug-traffickers, amongst them essentially the most harmful in our nation”, have been transferred to a high-security jail at Vendin-le-Vieil in northern France.
A wave of arson and gun assaults at French prisons within the spring was widely pinned on drugs gangs hitting again on the authorities’s crackdown.
