Launched on March 19, the anti-drug operations baptized by the government “Place Net XXL” are producing “huge effects,” said the Minister of the Interior, Gérald Darmanin, on Saturday March 30, during a trip to Saint-Denis (Seine-Saint-Denis). “We are at 1,738 arrests, 150 kilos of drugs seized (…), 2.4 million euros and more than 20,000 gendarmes and police officers mobilized,” assured the tenant of Place Beauvau.
“We will continue these anti-drug operations,” added Mr. Darmanin. In Paris and the Paris region, he insisted on “the significant resources” deployed since Monday, notably “thirty-three anti-drug operations mounted in five days” as well as “3,600 police and gendarmerie personnel mobilized”. In all, 319 people were taken into custody, and 800,000 euros of cash seized, according to the minister, who announced the deployment of “three new anti-drug operations” from Monday in France, bringing the number to nine total operations.
On March 19, the President of the Republic, Emmanuel Macron, went to Marseille with Mr. Darmanin and the Minister of Justice, Eric Dupond-Moretti, for the launch of the first anti-drug operation. This came two weeks after the cry of alarm from magistrates in the Marseille city asking for a “Marshall plan” to save France’s second city from drug banditry.
Hearing before the senatorial commission of inquiry, the Marseille investigating judge Isabelle Couderc, coordinator of the seven Marseille investigating judges responsible for organized crime, notably expressed her fears that the State was “losing the war”. committed against drug trafficking. An outing which particularly displeased Mr. Dupond-Moretti.
“Flicking operations”
In Marseille, Mr. Macron promised that around ten other operations of this type would take place nationally in the following weeks. On Monday, four interventions – in the North, in the Paris region, in the Lyon metropolitan area and in Dijon as well as in the central-east of France – were launched, opening the way to criticism from actors on the ground.
Questioned by Agence France-Presse, the Magistrates’ Union (classified on the left) had notably described these actions as “fleeing operations”, urging “the government to get out of this unnecessarily costly escalation”. These operations, which “mobilize, on an ad hoc basis, considerable police resources on public roads cannot be sufficient to stem drug trafficking”, for its part judged the French Association of Investigating Magistrates.
