Safety reinforcements were expected at the end of the day after the outbreak of violence that the neighborhood experienced in the night from Tuesday to Wednesday.
Le Monde with AFP
Almost a year after similar facts, a district of Alençon experienced a flambé of violence on the night of Tuesday 27 to Wednesday 28 September. The Orne prefecture announced at the end of the day on Wednesday the arrival of security reinforcements.
“After the night of urban violence that the Perseigne district experienced in Alençon”, the prefect of the Orne “asked for the establishment of a reinforced security system”, according to a press release from the prefecture . Will thus be “engaged three sections of the Republican Security Company (CRS) 27 from Toulouse” as well as “two crews of anti -crime brigades from Calvados and Sarthe, more than 65 deployed police officers”, specifies the prefecture, adding that Additional reinforcements can be mobilized if necessary, in the city of 26,000 inhabitants.
Tuesday evening, “from 11:15 p.m., around thirty individuals carried out a coordinated action of urban violence, with the manifest will to attract the police in an ambush: twenty-four Vehicles were burnt down, three vehicles were returned to slow down the progress of the police, a bus shelter was destroyed, “the prefect of the Orne had deplored on Wednesday morning in a statement. The facts lasted until 2 am in the Perseigne district, said the Public Prosecutor of Alençon, Laetitia Mirande.
“Urban guerrilla scene”
“It hurts the heart,” said a photographer from the France-Presse agency a retiree from the neighborhood whose only car was burned. “My husband has only 600 euros of retirement, me 1,100, but with 500 euros of rent, the light, all that … it’s not possible” to buy a vehicle, explained the resident of this city where the Unemployment rate reaches 21 %.
The Unsa-Police union mentioned in a press release “a real scene of urban guerrilla warfare”. “Local officials have faced around fifty armed rioters with iron bars,” he said. The Syndicate of Police Alliance 61 reports “sixty mortars (of artifice) drawn towards the police”.
According to the prefecture, around forty police officers and gendarmes of the Orne “were mobilized to secure the action of firefighters”. Twenty firefighters and three firefighters were hired to put out the fires, added the same source. “A presence of the security forces will be maintained at a high level in the coming days,” says the prefecture.
“Punch operations against”
networks
During the night of October 26 to 27, 2021, similar facts had occurred in this popular district of Alençon: thirteen vehicles had been burnt down and the police had also been the target of mortar fire ‘artifice. “What we knew last night is the direct consequence of the work that the police do in the neighborhood (…). The police [] lead a hard fight against drug trafficking,” added Sébastien Jallet, The prefect of the Orne, on BFM-TV.
“For several months, we have been punching (…) against networks. Fifteen days ago, we still dismantled (…) a clandestine laboratory (…). Last week, we challenged two Dealers at the bottom of a building in the Perseigne district, and yesterday afternoon, two young people were arrested by the police and one might think that there is a fairly direct link between this action of the police ( …) Against drugs to Persian and what we knew last night in the neighborhood, “said Mr. Jallet. Questioned by AFP on this point, the prosecution did not follow up. Alliance denounces a “cruel lack of workforce” and asks, like the Unsa, reinforcements.
The mayor of Alençon, Joaquim Pueyo, “behind the Socialist Party”, also deplores that “there are not enough police officers at night” despite additional positions, four according to the prefect, created In Alençon following the facts of October 2021. On October 28, 2021, Marine Le Pen, then candidate of the national rally for the presidential election, had made the trip to Alençon to denounce a “laxity”, according to her, policies Faced with urban violence.