After the elected officials, the citizens. A group of residents and shopkeepers from the Porte de la Villette district, between the 19th arrondissement of Paris and the communes of Pantin and Aubervilliers (Seine-Saint-Denis), took legal action on May 31 to request the removal of the square Auguste Baron drug addict camp, after eight months of nuisance.
As a reminder, on September 24, drug addicts who camped in the Jardins d’Eole and the Stalingrad district, in Paris, were moved by the police, on the order of the prefect, to this square, a stone’s throw from the Seine-Saint- Denis and the Quatre Chemins district, between the towns of Pantin and Aubervilliers. Despite the hastily erected wall to block the passage Forceval, which passes under the Boulevard Périphérique, local residents suffer many nuisances and attacks, since crack users bypass it.
Assaults, weapons, prostitution…
“Daily physical attacks, invectives, threats and insults, scenes of illegal consumption of hard drugs, trafficking, exhibitionism, settling of accounts and constant carrying of weapons by many “regulars” and “inhabitants” of the camp, disturbances caused to the merchants of the district, who have seen their turnover drastically reduce since the implementation of the decree…”. In an open letter addressed at the same time to the Paris Prefect of Police Didier Lallement, the lawyer for the “Villette Village” collective draws up a particularly sordid inventory of these nuisances. “We even seized a bailiff in May who had to run away from the square! », adds Master Gil Moser.
While the town halls of Paris, Pantin and Aubervilliers, as well as the Departmental Council of Seine-Saint-Denis have been dismissed from their request for interim measures “useful measures”, filed on February 9 and aiming to impose on the State the assumption of responsibility drug addicts, the collective has this time filed an appeal for annulment of the expulsion order, which in fact set up the camp for drug addicts on the Place Auguste Baron. 100,000 euros are also requested from both the Paris Police Prefecture and the Paris City Hall for non-pecuniary damage.
Individual compensation
“The prefecture is responsible for security and public order, which have actually been degraded by this decree, and the Paris City Hall is responsible for health on its territory. However, she did not deign to propose an adequate solution for the move, ”storms the lawyer. “We will also seek individual compensation for each victim of this situation. The Villette Village collective has already identified several hundred facts and testimonies,” he explains.
In concrete terms, the collective is once again asking for support for these 500 or so crack users and for their camp to be moved away from any dwelling. If the police headquarters had justified this move by arguing a low population density in the area, the popular district of Quatre Chemins actually hosts 27,183 inhabitants per square kilometer.
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