“If the town is more peaceful than before, there are certain pockets of resistance against which we must seriously fight”, says Jérémie Bréaud, elected mayor (LR) of Bron in June 2020, after having beaten the outgoing socialist mayor, Jean-Michel Longueval, by a few votes. After other municipalities in the agglomeration, a district of the city was thus confronted with acts of urban violence on Saturday evening, March 6, with clashes between a group of young people and the police.
As soon as he arrived at the town hall, the new elected official placed his action under the sign of security. While a group of residents reported, from the start of the summer, the increase in incivility and nuisances in several districts of the town, Jérémie Bréaud was quick to implement his promises: on October 1, 2020, the city council votes to increase the staff of the municipal police by 70%, to arm its agents and to double the number of surveillance cameras.
The mayor of Bron threatened with death
The town hall announces, moreover, the reinforcement of the collaboration between the municipal police and the national police during the operations on the ground. In his viewfinder, the working-class districts of Terraillon and Parilly, marked by “Drug trafficking and urban rodeos” for several years and subject to a vast urban renewal program since 2010.
If Jérémie Bréaud must first deplore a few tags “Slanderous but usual” assures the councilor, the month of September marks a turning point in hostilities. During a wedding celebrated in the district of Parilly, an intervention of the police to put an end to an “urban rodeo” triggers violent clashes, exchanges of tear gas and several car fires.
A few weeks later, and while France is still in shock from the assassination of Samuel Paty, the mayor of Bron receives a first threat of beheading. After being the target of a projectile throw in January 2021, the elected official was placed under police protection.
“Gestures of solidarity” between abandoned territories
For Souil Merbaki, founder and president of the association Jeunesse Engagée Terraillon (JET), in the eponymous district, “ the inhabitants of the suburbs are the first victims of incivility and want to put an end to it ”. So, if this hostility can manifest itself in reaction to the brutal measures of the “Hard straight” embodied according to him by the newly elected, it is above all the symptom of “Lack of consideration and respect” felt by a minority of the population.
→ INTERVIEW. “Priority neighborhoods are in an emergency situation”
In Bron, the urban renewal program led to the destruction of important places of social life for young people from different neighborhoods. If associations like JET have enabled part of the youth “Idle” du Terraillon to gradually reintegrate thanks to a professional activity, the UC district of Parilly, which has no similar structures, is suffering from abandonment. For Souil Merbaki, who grew up there, the urban violence that has broken out in recent days in the Lyon metropolis are considered “Gestures of solidarity” with other abandoned territories, such as Rilleux-la-Pape where the mayor is undergoing similar threats. ” They highlight the growing isolation of some young people, underlines Souil Merbaki, which the new town halls must make their priority. »
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