Nantes. Armed municipal police? “Especially not,” replies a street educator – HIT WEST

“Should we wait until a colleague is in turn a collateral victim of drug trafficking?”This is the question posed by the Force Ouvrière union, which is demanding lethal weapons for the municipal police of Nantes. Officers are mobilizing this Friday, June 12 following the four murders of young people aged 15 to 22, in five weeks, in the north-eastern neighborhoods of the city. Today, they have a baton, an electric pulse gun, shields and helmets, but no weapon that can kill like their counterparts in the national police.

What do street educators, in contact with young people who fall into drug trafficking, think? “No, definitely not, lethal weapons are not a good idea, répond Julien Ménec à la Bottière-Pin Sec. I hear that the municipal police officers feel insecure, almost. But it is not with a weapon that they are going to settle the question. On the contrary, it will further stigmatize the population with which they work.

 

“Young people are victims of trafficking”

 

We lost the local police a few years ago. I’m not saying it was a solution, but at least the young people knew the police officers who worked around their homes. But in itself, we are not for more police. Above all, we need more external support“.

This South Social Health union delegate insists on “one thing that is very little said: young people in drug dealing areas, as in prostitution for minors, are victims. We must not consider them as simply delinquents. They are victims of trafficking and, in that sense, we must support them”. 

Julien Ménec is fighting so that neighborhoods have more human support and public services as close as possible to a very precarious population: “We see that there is an increasingly fertile ground for the establishment of drug trafficking in the neighborhoods, linked to growing precariousness.

 

No “easy money”, but “quick money”

 

We see something simple: all the young people we know in drug sales are young people who have no choice in being there. It’s not easy money, contrary to what people think, it’s quick money. They need money quickly because their families are in great precariousness, they are often single-parent families, single parents who do not necessarily have the capacity to work, with several children… Sometimes, they are undocumented, because regularization in France is complicated, or they do not have access to employment because, when you come from a neighborhood and have an Arab or African-sounding name, it is difficult to find a job, and this causes great financial difficulties”.

This street educator for the Departmental Specialized Prevention Agency (ADPS44) was personally affected by the death of one of the young people, Serge NJoh Lea, Bottière district: “It’s very emotionally complicated for my colleagues and me because we knew him well. He was a laughing, adorable young man who made lots of jokes. Serge, I don’t know if he was in traffic, but I insist, he was mainly a kid from the neighborhood“. 

 

Give more resources to educators

 

We, street educators, our goal is to support young people to help them find training and employment solutions, sometimes to create an association, and also to support families in difficulty. We want to avoid growing social exclusion. But we clearly don’t have the means for that. For example, at La Bottière-Pin Sec, there are only four of us, and that’s too few”.

Its union, the CGT ADPS44 and the Social Work in Struggle 44 collective are demanding “the establishment of street educators in neighborhoods where there are none, such as in Port-Boyer, Breil, Ranzay and Halvêque, in Nantes, and at Trébale, in Saint-Nazaire”.