the Forceval camp evacuated by the police

The Forceval camp, in the northeast of Paris, where a hundred crack users have been gathering for a year, began to be dismantled on Wednesday morning, October 5, by the police, announced the Minister of the Interior. , Gerald Darmanin.

“On my instruction, the prefect of police proceeds to the final dismantling of the camp of the crack of the square Forceval. A thousand police officers will be deployed so that this camp does not reconstitute elsewhere “has tweeted the Minister of the Interior when the police entered the camp, as noted by a journalist from Agence France-Presse.

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Shortly before 7 a.m., a large police force deployed around the camp, in the presence of the Paris police chief, Laurent Nunez. “In total, nearly a thousand police officers will be mobilized over twenty-four hours, both to carry out the operation, but also in the following days to secure the various strategic sectors and thus avoid the reconstitution of another fixation point. »we explained to the Ministry of the Interior.

Mr. Darmanin has “instructed that no such encampment should be rebuilt elsewhere”, we added. The ministry stressed that this operation was “unprecedented since the phenomenon of crack has affected the North-East of Paris for several decades”.

Place Beauvau specified that “wanted persons will be arrested, as will foreigners in an irregular situation who will be placed in CRA [centre de rétention administrative] with a view to their expulsion”. “The other occupants will be directed to accommodation facilities with medico-social support or to care units”.

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Assaults, thefts and nuisances

The problem of crack in the capital figured in the roadmap entrusted by the Minister of the Interior to the new prefect of police. On September 25, Mr. Nunez had promised that the site would close. A year earlier, the Paris police headquarters had decided to move users of crack – a highly addictive smokable derivative of cocaine – to this site without any shelter.

Their arrival seriously disrupted public security in the surrounding neighborhoods, provoking demonstrations and legal action to demand the evacuation of the camp. According to the associative actors, between three hundred and four hundred people during the day and one hundred and fifty at night, of which 35 to 40% were women, were present in this square. The dealers sell the pebbles there (dose of crack at 10 euros) in the middle of the consumers.

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Located on the borders of 19e district of Paris, the square is bordered by the ring road, a fenced event area and a large roundabout leading to the popular district of Quatre-Chemins, straddling the communes of Pantin and Aubervilliers, in Seine-Saint-Denis. For a year, the inhabitants of this district and that of La Villette, in Paris, have constantly complained of attacks, thefts and other nuisances caused by the installation of crack users. On September 24, on the anniversary of the displacement of the latter, five hundred demonstrators marched through the streets of Pantin and Aubervilliers to denounce a “let it go” authorities and demand the evacuation of the camp.

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The World with AFP


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