Security: how do the police intend to make Toulouse a safe city again?
Are the crime figures better in the big towns of Haute Garonne this year? “Yes” says the prefect Etienne Guyot “if we compare September 2021 to last September”: “- 25% on thefts with violence, – 53% on violence in public transport, + 363% on the dismantling of deal points” details Etienne Guyot who attributes it to “significant efforts made” in the police zone for three weeks.
Because the Departmental Directorate of Public Security has changed gears on everyday crime; “a new way of occupying the territory, at the level of men” welcomes the representative of the State in Haute-Garonne who has seen for many months the facts of delinquency to people increase continuously in the Pink City.
The police will go all out on pedestrian and mountain bike patrols in city centers
“We are going to be more visible to the population” confirms Jean-Cyrille Reymond, departmental director of public security who identified 91 “sensitive sectors” in Toulouse, Blagnac, Tournefeuille, Saint-Gaudens and Colomiers where acts of delinquency are the most numerous: “town centre, surroundings of schools, markets, transport, festive gathering places and shopping centres”. “Most of our patrols were in vehicles to cover the widest possible territory” from now on “We reverse all this, we will increase foot patrols, mountain biking and public transport. »
Why and with what staff?
“Reassure, dissuade, make contact and challenge” are the key words for the DDSP which will mobilize these public road units: “BST (Specialized Field Brigades), security and proximity groups (GSP), the departmental public transport security service and occasionally the canine brigade, emergency police and the departmental intervention company (CDI)” . DDSP 31 will also mobilize its future operational reserve “the first reservists see their training end at the end of October and they will start working with us. » National objective: 30,000 reservists by 2030. “We take feedback from the field to refine” emphasizes Jean-Cyrille Reymond and “The population can write to me as well as to the mayor and the prefect. »
Emilion Esnault, deputy mayor of Toulouse in charge of security, welcomed this new device “ it is an additional lever in the fight against delinquency in complementarity with the municipal police. » During one of the first pedestrian patrols at the Cristal market, traders validated the process; like Isabelle the market gardener”it’s very good, there are especially pickpockets at least once a week, that will deter them, Toulouse has changed, as a woman I no longer go out in the evening, even accompanied by a man personally I’m afraid “.