May 17, 2022
It is still one of the few cities in its stratum not to have one in France. The City of Montluçon is working on the creation of a municipal police force by mid-2023. Mayor Frédéric Laporte presented this morning the outlines of what this new service should be. The essential in three questions.
Why a municipal police?
So far the mayor of Montluçon had been skeptical on the issue, believing that security issues fell to the State and therefore to the national police. The responses obtained during the consultation launched with the population and feedback from residents during neighborhood meetings tipped the scales. “It is no longer a matter of principle but of responding to a societal demand” in the face of the multiplication of incivilities in particular. According to the City of Montluçon, of the 82 municipalities with more than 30,000 inhabitants and less than 40,000 inhabitants, Montluçon was the only one not to have set up this type of service.
How will it work?
In the project presented this morning, the City is counting on the recruitment of seven agents, including a department head. The four public road surveillance officers will also be integrated into this structure. By way of comparison, cities of similar size such as Maçon (8 agents), Auxerre (11 agents) or Roanne (24 agents) have bet on larger staff.
Civil servants must be recruited during the second half of the year, before six months of training at the start of 2023. “We absolutely did not want them to be equipped with lethal weapons”, specifies Frédéric Laporte. Future agents will therefore carry a defense baton, tear gas canister, handcuffs, bulletproof vest, and Taser. The new service would be installed in the premises of the Town Hall. It could be commissioned in mid-2023. The allocated budget is around 500,000 euros per year.
What assignments?
They will obviously be different from those of the national police. Everything will be fixed in an agreement with the Prefect and the Public Prosecutor. “His main mission will be prevention”, insists the assistant in charge of the file, Pierre Laroche. The municipal police will intervene in fields such as the fight against incivility, respect for the highway code, the environment… Daily problems on which the national police have little time to devote. The agents will however have the possibility of verbalizing, if necessary.
The mayor and his deputy also insisted on the necessary “proximity” of the action of the municipal police officers. Circulation on foot or by bicycle will also be privileged.
All the information on the subject in our flashes tonight and our editions tomorrow from 7 a.m.
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