Urban rodeos in Toulouse: the “petarant” summer of the inhabitants of the Bagatelle district
In this popular district of the Pink City, the scourge of urban rodeos rots the daily life of the inhabitants despite the more effective and more targeted action of the national police.
Finally a little respite for the inhabitants of the Bagatelle district. The rain dampened the enthusiasm of urban rodeo enthusiasts. The infernal backfires of scooters, quads or motocross no longer come to martyrize the eardrums of Anne-Marie, 62 years old. This housekeeper, raised in this working-class district of the Pink City, fears the return of summer temperatures this Sunday and the following days: “I clean offices. It’s on a staggered schedule. I get up at 5 a.m. and resume the evening at 7 p.m. I try to rest in the afternoon but when the weather is nice and hot it’s impossible. Until 3-4 p.m., the time they wake up, I’m quiet. Afterwards, it’s non-stop until nightfall. They turn and turn making a racket of all the devils. I don’t know what they’re doing with their exhausts but that noise is unbearable. »
Sonia is now a safer one. It moved from the rue du Lot, favorite playground for two-wheeled speeders, to a quieter place away from the main straight lines with thunderous accelerations and acrobatics of all kinds. “In my old home, it’s very simple, I couldn’t open the windows at all, the decibel level was too high. There, it’s better, I’m more comfortable but it’s not just the noise. There is the risk that they mow down kids. I’m a childminder, I’m always afraid that a child of four or five will get hit. It’s very distressing. »
“It’s true that we see them a lot more on patrol”
One day ago, a septuagenarian lost her life, mowed down by a biker who was driving at breakneck speed on the avenue du Général-Eisenhower while backwheeling. The Toulouse police stepped up operations this summer to prevent this kind of tragedy from happening again. “It’s true that we’ve seen them a lot more on patrol lately,” agrees Anne-Marie. Especially in August. Over this period, police officers carried out 187 operations dedicated to the fight against urban rodeos, carried out 730 checks. 11 “urban rodeo” offenses were recorded. A success, the offense is particularly difficult to characterize since the driver must be caught in the process of constituting several offenses beyond the Highway Code in a repeated manner. The agents used new technical means (video surveillance cameras, reconnaissance aircraft) to gain in efficiency.
71 other offenses such as lack of license or driving under narcotics were also noted. Across the entire department (police and gendarmerie areas), 251 operations were carried out between August 8 and September 4, during which 2,390 checks on people or vehicles were carried out. On this occasion, there were 26 arrests and these operations resulted in the seizure of 20 vehicles (including 12 two-wheelers). “In recent weeks, we have noted a very significant drop in calls to 17 or Allo Toulouse, from people who complain about rodeos”, assures Jean-Cyrille Reymond, the boss of the Toulouse police.
If the phenomenon is far from being eradicated, it would seem that the action of the police, in particular by the seizure of the machines, has made more than one driver think.