The Deux-Sèvres prefecture experienced its first night of urban violence on the night of Friday June 30 to Saturday July 1. About sixty individuals set fire to and damaged several businesses as well as the town hall in the Clou-Bouchet district in Niort.
The violence that has shaken many large cities in France and New Aquitaine for three days, in response to the death of young Nahel in the Paris region, now extend to municipalities hitherto spared. And not used to making the headlines for this kind of facts.
Thus, Niort experienced its first night of riots last night. A little after midnight, Clou-Bouchet, one of the city’s three priority districts, was set on fire for several hours. Cars were set on fire, the town hall devastated and businesses vandalized by several dozen looters who clashed with the police until the latter regained control of the situation, around three o’clock in the morning.
The mayor of Niort Jérôme Baloge in the Clou-Bouchet district, the scene of violent riots on the night of June 30 to July 1. • © Cyril Paquier, France Televisions
“They were very organized, knew the neighborhood very well, they had a strategy and leaders” analyzes the mayor of the city. Jérôme Baloge was there, he says he saw “fifty to a hundred young men, many hooded and dressed in black”. None could be arrested or identified. “They let off steam on public buildings, laments the chosen one, and on a district town hall, where we serve the inhabitants.”
Installed for several years in the shopping mall located at the foot of the bars of buildings, Benoit Petit discovers what remains of his hairdressing salon. The whole window has fallen. In shock, he struggles to find the words. “I am amazed, I don’t understand anything, I have no explanation” he breathes.
There was no value in my living room. Everything is ransacked. It is a totally free act. I am completely dumbfounded.
Benoit Petit, merchant in Niort
France 3 Poitou-Charentes
One of the businesses vandalized last night in the Clou-Bouchet district of Niort. • © Cyril Paquier, France Televisions
A little further on, the optician also noticed the damage. His window was shattered. His cash fund has disappeared. The rioters helped themselves to the displays. He has not yet quantified the damage.
In this district, which has been confronted with drug trafficking for several years, calm has now returned. The inhabitants – there are nearly 3,000 here – look in disbelief at the few charred carcasses of vehicles that have not yet been removed.
One of them tells. The explosions caused by the first mortar fire, the cries of fear from his children and his exit around 2 a.m. “to move (his) car” for fear of fires. “I need it to work, you understand”. Then he adds: “This neighborhood is becoming more and more risky. There is too much insecurity. I’m going to try to move, I don’t want to stay anymore.” As he speaks in front of the camera of our team made up of Alain Darrigrand and Cyril Paquier, a passer-by interrupts him and launches: “Thank you justice for the protection, we didn’t see anyone last night.”
Thirty police officers assisted by gendarmerie reinforcements were however deployed. “Twice as usual” assures the prefect of Deux-Sèvres. During the night, a departmental operational center had been set up to coordinate all the police and emergency forces at work in the district.
Were these means sufficient? “They were proportionate to the nature of the risk that we knew” argues Emmanuelle Dubée who fears new excesses to come. “I call on everyone to stay at home” adds the representative of the State, specifying that means will be deployed again this Saturday evening to try to contain the spread of the phenomenon.
“Niort had been spared so far, but it was feared that it would not last, considers Jérôme Baloge, besides, there was no reason for us not to be hit.” Like Châtellerault, Agen and other usually “quiet” provincial towns.
“The common point to all these small medium-sized towns is a general context of precariousness and a form of social disarray, Adrien Ostolski analysis. “Châtellerault, for example, which has suffered the brunt of deindustrialization, has one of the highest poverty and unemployment rates in the region.”
A charred carcass in the Clou-Bouchet district of Niort this Saturday July 1. • © Cyril Paquier, France Televisions
It is therefore not surprising for this Poitevin sociologist, researcher at the Émile Durkheim center at the University of Bordeaux, that “this rioting phenomenon is spreading from Île-de-France, it is the same sociological breeding ground and the same socio-economic problems whether we are in Agen or Aubervilliers, even if it does not have the same intensity Of course.”
The fact that these riots are spreading throughout France is also to be found, according to him, in this “strong sense of cohesion common to the inhabitants of these large urban complexes”. Like the print “of a shared destiny” with the young man killed in the Hauts-de-Seine. “It speaks to them. We touched someone in Nanterre, but it could have been us, since we are experiencing the same thing, the same discrimination, and we have the same relationship with the police” further details Adrien Ostolski.
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