After police operations to “destabilize” drug traffickers in France, a deadly summer

The summer chronicle of drug trafficking was dominated for a time by an Australian field hockey player who, just days after his team was eliminated, was found walking along a street in the 9th district at night with a gram of cocaine in his pocket.^th Arrondissement of Paris. The arrest of Tom Craig, who got off with a public apology and a criminal warning, will swell police statistics in an area marked “blue” with increased staffing for the Olympics.

Drug crimes rose by 138%, according to figures released The World by the Police Prefecture, with fines tripling compared to July 2023. During the Olympic Games from July 15 to August 8, 802 people were charged with drug-related offenses, compared to 447 during the same period in 2023.

The police prefecture revealed another report on the 55 “Place nice” (“Clear the way”) operations carried out between January 1 and August 1, resulting in 375 arrests, the seizure of 535 kilos of cannabis resin, 51 kilos of cannabis, 7 kilos of cocaine, 47 firearms and over 1.8 million euros. In some districts, which were targeted as hubs for the resale of narcotics and temporarily occupied by large police forces in winter and spring, new cases of intimidation, violence and murder related to drug trafficking have been recorded since the beginning of summer. The police prefecture admitted that The World: “These public and legal operations destabilize human trafficking and spark turf wars to recapture the broken agreements.”

Mourning in the north-eastern suburbs of Paris

One of France's largest drug trafficking hubs, the Capsulerie housing project in the Paris suburb of Bagnolet, was not spared from these territorial wars. On July 14, in the afternoon, a 30-year-old man was shot dead by a gunman on a scooter. This murder was not the only one to plunge the north-eastern suburbs of Paris into mourning.

On the evening of July 19, two men known for their involvement in drug-related crimes were killed and a third was seriously injured in a shooting in the Chemin Vert housing estate in Bobigny, a hotspot for drug trafficking. On July 30, a 46-year-old man also known for his involvement in drug trafficking and recently released from prison was shot four times with a Kalashnikov by two hitmen outside his home in Livry-Gargan. The two hitmen fled in a stolen car, which they later set on fire.

These murders are a continuation of those that took place in the spring, particularly in Aulnay-sous-Bois and Sevran, near lucrative trading centres that had also previously been closed down by police operations and will soon be investigated by the judiciary to combat organised crime. But this summer of revenge has also reached many other repressed corners of the country, revealing local groups struggling to carry on their business – power vacuums caused by imprisonment, market shifts and tensions between competing groups. In Hyères and Valence in the south of France, Mulhouse in the east and especially in Grenoble in the Alps, where several cases have followed one another since the end of July.

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