Of him, we only know his identity, recorded in a file of the second judicial police district (2e DPJ) of Paris. A real civil status, Cheikh N., two aliases, a date of birth, an address in Sevran (Seine-Saint-Denis), a nationality, Senegalese, and a city of origin: Louga, a three-hour drive from Dakar , towards the Mauritanian border.
On September 9, investigators from the 2e DPJ arrest him with an accomplice for drug trafficking. The searches lead to the discovery of nearly 8,000 euros in cash and the crack manufacturing paraphernalia.
Three days later, another neighborhood, another dealer. Souleymane M. is arrested in the middle of the street in the 15e borough. Nestled in his underwear, yellowish plastic-coated pebbles, carboys of crack. The police, those of 3e DPJ this time, go back to his home and discover the distinctive signs of the “cooks”: hundreds of euros in coins, two scales, baking soda and an accounting book. For two years, he had been supplying around twenty customers a day at the southern gates of Paris, Choisy, Ivry, Italy, plus delivery men. His nationality: Senegalese. His hometown: Louga.
September 6, Mamadou D.: again on the 3e DPJ, and a drug dealer who travels by bicycle, between Aubervilliers (Seine-Saint-Denis), where he lives, and the Porte de La Chapelle. At midnight, the police swoop down on him. In his pockets, 113 pebbles. At his home, 87 other pebbles, 100 grams of cocaine packaged in eleven eggs, these packaging signing the Guyanese import, and cutting products, caffeine and phenacetin, a carcinogenic analgesic withdrawn from the market. In police custody, he recognizes his trafficking, to help his sick sisters in the country, explains that he only earns 1,200 euros per month and does this to finance his house in Senegal, where he comes from. His hometown: Louga.
“They have no scruples”
Among the dealers arrested by the Paris judicial police this summer, many are Senegalese. From Louga, a lot, sometimes from Dakar. Two are Guineans, one Sudanese, one Malian. Others are of French nationality, some live in Guyana.
But the recurrence of Louga, this large agricultural town of 105,000 inhabitants in northern Senegal, raises questions about the operation of trafficking, including drugs made in France, cooked by diluting South American powder as close as possible to buyers, seems to be put on the market by a specialized workforce. There is not yet a Pablo Escobar of crack, sprawling cartels pouring into narcobanditry – it is the poor relation of cocaine, sold by the poor –, but a set of short circuits, the dismantling of which has become the priority of the Parisian police, because of the nuisances generated by this substance.
You have 81.62% of this article left to read. The following is for subscribers only.