A way to fight drug trafficking?
Around twenty video cameras financed by the social landlord Erilia with the help of the State were installed in the city of Charrel in Aubagne (Bouches-du-Rhône), a priority district for city policy in which there remains a point residual deal.
We asked ourselves what we could do “as a city, to support the landlord Erilia in order to help him with the problem of drug trafficking but also everyday incivility, which can also generate this feeling of insecurity among residents” , declared Vincent Rusconi, deputy mayor of Aubagne in charge of security, during the signing on Wednesday of a partnership agreement between the city and the social landlord.
Erilia financed, to the tune of 300,000 euros and with state aid of 71,000 euros, the installation of 23 cameras arranged on 12 masts outside the Charrel residence, which has nearly 1,000 homes .
These cameras are directly connected to the urban supervision center (CSU) of the municipal police of Aubagne, a town of just over 45,000 inhabitants east of Marseille.
Cameras outside buildings
“We very often install video protection systems but are rarely connected to an urban supervision center 24 hours a day, which still allows for very strong responsiveness from the police services,” recalled the general director of Erilia, Frédéric Lavergne.
The cameras, still in the testing phase but operational for a week, “will make it possible to check the traffic routes inside the residence, but they are well outside the buildings,” he added.
The sub-prefect of Bouches-du-Rhône, Yannis Bouzard, also welcomed a “new” and “innovative” initiative, recalling that “the State finances video protection to the tune of 800,000 euros each year in thirteen municipalities in the department” .
Another social landlord, in Aix-en-Provence, has already benefited from such state funding.
“We also have a priority in Aubagne which is the fight against drug trafficking.
For several years, of the six known deal points in the city, five have been purely and simply dismantled,” underlined the sub-prefect.
As for that of Charrel, which is now “living by”, “we must give it the final blow”.
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“Video protection is undoubtedly a guarantee first of all of better administration of evidence for our criminal investigations, and then it is preventive”, by encouraging some to renounce “acts of delinquency”, noted the deputy prosecutor of the Marseille public prosecutor's office, Audrey Jouaneton, welcoming an “exemplary” initiative which is “a laboratory”.
However, the traffic has undoubtedly been "pushed back somewhere" and "to say that it has completely disappeared would be to be optimistic", she admitted.