An arrest prevented by a hostile crowd in a sensitive district of Toulon

“Block the cops! Block them!” It is a scene worthy of a film which took place Friday July 22 in the district of La Beaucaire, classified zone of “republican reconquest” in Toulon, where tensions have multiplied in recent days.

According to several police sources, in the evening from Friday to Saturday, an individual who had just been arrested was outright “exfiltrated”in handcuffs, by a group of individuals, thus preventing the police from bringing him back to the police station.

During “of surveillance” on the side of the neighborhood boxing gym, the officials of the local security group (GSP) had surprised this individual who seemed to be involved in drug trafficking.

Throwing projectiles and gathering

Moreover, at the sight of the police – under the usual warning cries “Ara! Ara!” – the suspect threw a cooler bag on the roof of the sports hall and took to their heels.

Pursued by the police on foot, the individual threw “block them!” for city residents. “Colleagues had to push back people who were intervening…” The fugitive was eventually apprehended in the parking lot behind the police office.

While escorting the handcuffed suspect to their premises, the GSP officers were the target of projectiles and fireworks. They also had to use tear gas to hold off a group of twenty to thirty hostile individuals.

–

‘Police get in the way of criminals’

A policeman nevertheless received slaps and the shackled individual was able to be “exfiltrated”. The city was quickly taken over by reinforcements from the GSP, the Specialized Field Brigade (BST) and the Republican Security Company (CRS), but the suspect disappeared. The bag he had gotten rid of also disappeared.

Contacted by Var-Matin, the police union Alliance denounces, through the voice of its departmental secretary Sébastien Soulé, “A trivialization of this violence against the police. It becomes daily, we need a criminal response to the height. We bother offenders, and we will continue to bother them”.

–