About fifteen mayors gathered in front of the Rouen police station (Seine-Maritime) on July 7, 2022. The elected officials expressed their dissatisfaction and demanded that the State respect its commitments.
The announcement of was made on October 19, 2021 by deputies of the presidential majority: “Minister of the Interior Gérald Darmanin has just announced the assignment of 60 additional police officers to the public security district of Rouen-Elbeuf, which brings together 33 municipalities in the Metropolis of Rouen, i.e. approximately 435,000 inhabitants in the 1st half of 2022.”
But if other Norman towns, such as those of Vernon, Le Havre, Evreux or Val-de-Reuil, have benefited from reinforcements in recent months, this is still not the case in Rouen where the arrival of 60 police officers was not done as promised “before the end of the first half of 2022”.
In December 2020, 22 mayors from the Rouen conurbation wrote to the Minister of the Interior “to alert him to the insufficient resources allocated to the national police to ensure the security of our cities and neighborhoods.”
Still not seeing anything coming, it was on July 7, 2022 that the mayors of the agglomeration of Rouen and Elbeuf decided to show their dissatisfaction by gathering in front of the Rouen police station, headquarters of the departmental direction of Seine-Maritime public security (DDSP 76).
Wearing their tricolor scarf, the mayors recalled the concern of the inhabitants in the face of the increase in delinquency and the drop in the number of patrols, especially at night and on cases such as those of narcotics where the municipal police, even reinforced, do not can intervene.
As explained Nicolas Mayer-Rossignol, Mayor of Rouen and President of the Rouen Normandy Metropolis to our journalist Grégory Archiapati, present on site, these reinforcements are necessary and must arrive:
“So much the better if other territories have staff, but here, we need them urgently. And not only do we need them, but we have been promised them! Mr. Darmanin, Minister of the Interior, told us written by signing “Friendship, Gérald Darmanin”, announcing to us 60 additional positions, net. Net of retirements, reclassifications, changes etc. They are not there!”
video length: 01min 51
–
VIDEO: demonstration of mayors on July 7, 2022 in Rouen to demand the arrival of the police promised by the Minister of the Interior
•
©France Televisions
–
In Rouen, at the headquarters of the DDSP 76, the police unions indicate that the workforce, in Seine-Maritime, would have increased from just over 2,000 police officers in 2018 to 1,700 in 2022. For Karim Bennacer, departmental delegate of the union Alliance, the arrival of 20 peacekeepers in August 2022 will not be enough to fill the gap and ensure the safety of crews during delicate interventions or in the face of hostile and violent individuals. He recalls that “The safety of police officers is non-negotiable.”
The lack of staff does not only affect police safety, adds Frédéric Desguerre, the delegate national secretary for the western zone of the Unit-SGP-Police union: “At the end of the chain, the one who suffers from this lack of manpower is the victim. They are not the perpetrators, they are the victims…”
–
