A 21-year-old man was killed with a heavy weapon on the night of August 29 to 30 in Béziers in Hérault, a city so far relatively spared from organized crime. Last week, three shootings had already taken place in Nîmes, in the Gard, killing two young people.
After Nîmes, Béziers? Shortly after midnight, a 21-year-old was shot in the town of Béziers, in Hérault, at rue Jean Franco in the popular district of Devèze. He died shortly afterwards in hospital.
The individual was known to justice, in particular for facts related to drug trafficking, according to the prosecutor of the judicial court of Béziers, Raphaël Balland. During the shooting, another person was slightly injured.
For Robert Ménard, the mayor of the city, it is undoubtedly a settling of accounts, the place of the tragedy being a well-known point of deal. The last shooting in the city dates back to July 2019, when a 27-year-old man was shot dead in the same neighborhood in broad daylight.
Are we witnessing a shift in acts of organized crime linked to drug trafficking to cities hitherto relatively spared?
“We are always on the same pattern”remarks Bruno Bartocetti, head of the SGP Police union for the south of France, at the microphone of our journalist Bérénice Del Tatto. “Of course, we are not in Marseille, but we can see that we find the same ingredients and the same operating mode, whether in Nîmes or Béziers.” According to the trade unionist, 38 settling of accounts have taken place in the Marseille city since last January, an increase compared to last year.
“When we talk about cannabis, we have this market which arrives from Dubai or Morocco, via Spain and as far as Marseille. On the A9 motorway, you have obligatory passages such as Béziers, Montpellier, Nîmes or Avignon. […] It is therefore often the same sponsors for the same networks that expand throughout the area”he explains.
It’s been a while since medium-sized towns like Nîmes or Béziers have been affected by drug trafficking, as have many villages, but it’s only been brought to light now, because there are settling of scores between competing networks. .
François-Xavier de Bonneville, deputy departmental secretary of the Gard national police
The geographical position of these cities would indeed make them particularly attractive for opportunists, abounds François-Xavier de Bonneville, deputy departmental secretary of the national police of Gard. “Occitania is halfway between Spain and Italy, it is a very busy road, conducive to “Go fast”, these traffickers who load drugs into a high-powered vehicle and travel at full speed to power the cities on the way”explains the unionist of National Police Alliance.
The Gard police officer explains in particular this resurgence of shootings in recent weeks by the increased circulation of weapons of war. “We have to tackle this problem head-on, he believes. For the Kalashnikovs, they probably come from eastern countries, in the context of the post-war period in the former Yugoslavia. I have already seen people get one under the coat for only 500€, ammunition included, it is a ridiculous sum for traffickers.”
For Bruno Bartocetti, the main problem lies elsewhere. “We have more and more consumers, so the traffickers are bringing more and more products to satisfy this demand, with the turf wars and sometimes the settling of accounts that entails.”
Cannabis and cocaine are everywhere today, even in rural areas.
Bruno Bartocetti, head of the SGP Police union for the south of France
According to one OFDT study (French Observatory of Drugs and Addictive Tendencies) conducted in partnership with Public Health France and published in December 2022, the levels of consumption of cannabis, which remains the most widely used illicit recreational drug in France, generally stabilized between 2017 and 2021. However, it is in Occitanie that the spread is the most important.
As for cocaine, on the other hand, consumption and visits to the emergency room are on the rise since 2010, all regions combined.
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