During a debate on public tranquility this Tuesday, July 5, associating justice, police and municipality, the mayor of Chenôve indicated that he no longer used the expression “living together” and asked the State “more means” to the national police.
The mayor of Chenôve Thierry Falconnet (PS) held the third meeting on public tranquility since 2015 with the objective of conducting a “democratic and republican dialogue” in a period of tension with the internal security forces.
At his side were Olivier Caracotch, public prosecutor of Dijon, Jean-Claude Dunand, departmental director of public security of Côte-d’Or, and Joëlle Boileau (PCF), deputy mayor in charge of public tranquility. The meeting is held in the presence of more than 160 people at the town hall of the commune.
A debate “without pretense”
“Incivility, damage to property and persons, rodeos of motorized vehicles, excessive and dangerous speeds, overflows and serious traffic offenses at weddings, drug trafficking, disturbances to peace and public order…” Thierry Falconnet immediately list “so many facts that poison our daily lives, so many transgressions of the law”.
The tone is set, the debate will take place “without pretense”, without invective either, in an attentive atmosphere, initially heavy before becoming conducive to dialogue, each one endeavoring to point out the problems even if they will not be not always accompanied by solutions other than making up for the “lack of means”.
Thierry Falconnet asks for “more resources” for the police
“Making Chenôve a peaceful city is one of our campaign commitments”, recalls Thierry Falconnet, “acting on issues of public tranquility is one of the priorities of the mandate that I lead with the municipal majority”.
For this the mayor salutes the action of the national police under the authority of the prefect. “We love the police”, then launches the socialist who, during the legislative elections, supported the NUPES initiated by Jean-Luc Mélenchon, with remarks on the police regularly causing controversy.
With regard to the municipal police, being the subject of the “recognition” and the “support” of the first city councilor, the latter rebels in the “personal threats” aimed at an agent and his family as well as in front of the fire of the police station, an “attack against a republican institution”.
Chenôve constitutes a “vulnerable territory”: “poverty, increasing precariousness, absence of diversity and social tensions constitute, with other factors, a breeding ground favorable to the development of the parallel economy”.
In this context, the vice-president of the association Cities and suburbs of France relays the call of Marseille seeking “more means” for the National Police, this always echoing the tribune broadcast during the urban violence in Chenôve in 2019 In the meantime, part of the town has become territory of Republican reconquest, giving priority to the arrival of CRS reinforcements if necessary.
More municipal police
For its part, the municipal majority has decided to increase the number of municipal police officers from 8 to 12 with the prospect of equipping them with lethal weapons and extending working hours in the evenings and on weekends. The weight of history means that the municipal police are not on duty on Saturdays but on Sunday mornings to support the holding of the market.
“I reiterate the request addressed by all the mayors of France for additional human and material resources to ensure on the ground in good conditions the operations to fight against crime and to maintain order which are the responsibility of the State. . (…) Our collective ability to enforce the laws of our Republic everywhere and by everyone depends on it. It is about the credibility of our institutions and the confidence, unfortunately damaged, (…) that our fellow citizens place in their institutions”, declares Thierry Falconnet in a context of low participation in the elections.
Punish parents of child offenders
“There is an expression that I have banished from my vocabulary, it is ‘living together'”, declares Thierry Falconnet, which casts a cold spell on the assembly accustomed to hearing these words in regional political speeches or nationals. “We have said it too much, for many of our fellow citizens, it means nothing more because it is far from being a reality.”
“We have to accept common rules, I’m not just talking about the law, I’m also talking about the rules of good manners, of well-being. It is education. (…) I fundamentally believe in co-education and in the fact that values are first transmitted by the parents. They are transmitted by sports educators, (…) of course transmitted by National Education, by popular education. (…) From there, already, there are things that are done upstream of the commission of offences, offenses that must find a police response, a judicial response and a response that puts reintegration into perspective, reparation and the return to a life in the rules on the part of those who committed the offenses and the crimes”, develops the socialist.
Regarding child offenders, since the subject of minors exploited as lookouts will often come up during the meeting, according to Thierry Falconnet, “they must be sanctioned in the same way as parents must be sanctioned under their parental authority”. “It is not up to the mayor, the municipality, the state to replace parental education, to ensure the education of children. (…) I believe a lot in education, in access to culture, in access to sports.”
Questions from the audience
Overall, the presence of “permanent lookouts” to warn drug traffickers of the arrival of police is of great concern to residents.
A beginning of response on the lookouts will come from the public prosecutor pointing out the difficulty in characterizing an offense, the fine for noise being little dissuasive. For his part, Jean-Claude Dunand estimates that “there are on average fifteen people per deal point”.
A resident estimates at twenty the number of “car fires” during the month of March, the elected officials of the City recall that there is support for the victims of such a disaster and invite them to “phone the mayor’s office” to get the form to fill out.
The opening hours of shops, set by the prefecture, are also debated, in particular because some shops, including a Carrefour Market store, would regularly overflow at night.
Opposition municipal councilor Philippe Neyaud (LR) also intervenes on the subject of businesses and generally claims “more firmness” from the majority on subjects of public tranquility.
“I refused the opening of the Carrefour Market 24 hours a day in relation to the disturbances to public tranquility that this would have caused”, reports Thierry Falconnet, referring to negotiations with the Carrefour group which is considering closing the store.
Several testimonials, in particular from a young adult who grew up in Chenôve and believed that “there is something beautiful to do here”, highlight the municipality’s communication gaps in terms of access to sports equipment. and sports events.
The subject of “anarchic” parking is discussed several times for several sectors of the town as well as the excessive speed of vehicles circulating in certain arteries.
Road improvements were announced by the mayor, in particular at the rue Armand-Thibaut tram stop to “calm traffic”, to the great satisfaction of the public.
To go beyond this annual meeting, a participatory council for public tranquility will be set up – with three meetings a year – to inform residents and gather their opinions on municipal action.
Jean-Christophe Tardivon
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