Paris authorities are once again at odds over the sensitive issue of crack cocaine users. The police chief has requested their removal from an area north-east of the capital to a derelict industrial railway zone – the third such eviction in less than nine months.
The police prefecture says it's found a new site to accomodate the crack users gathered at Porte de la Villette in Paris's 19th arrondissement.
The proposed area, in south-eastern Paris, belongs to the SNCF national rail company and is located at an intersection of two railway lines near Porte de Charenton.
It is in an industrial wasteland where a large-scale development district, the Bercy-Charenton urban project, is expected to be built in the near future. It will reclaimed for housing, offices, shops and green spaces.
For the Paris police chief Didier Lallement, this site meets the search criteria "as best as possible". He says it is removed from residential areas, shops and transport hubs but still "accessible to health and social services".
But on Monday, Paris mayor Anne Hidalgo reaffirmed her "clear and firm opposition" to a new organised relocation of users of this "cheap and highly addictive derivative of cocaine".
Emmanuelle Pierre-Marie, Mayor of the 12th arrondissement where the site is located, took to Twitter to denouce what she called the "brutal and unilateral decision by the Paris Police Prefecture, which respects neither the residents of the 12th arrondissement, nor people addicted to crack".
Je dénonce une décision brutale et unilatérale de la préfecture de Police de Paris qui ne respecte ni les habitant·es du 12e, ni les personnes en situation de dépendance au crack. La ZAC Bercy-Charenton est un lieu inadapté à leur prise en charge. pic.twitter.com/a1OLbulGJp
— Emmanuelle Pierre-Marie (@EPierreMarie) January 26, 2022
Third eviction in nine months
"Moving drug users will not solve the crack problem once and for all, but it is a duty to the residents of the 19th and 18th arrondissements, who have suffered for too long from the presence of drug users," explained Lallement.
"Drug users need comprehensive social and health care, which the succession of police operations does not provide," retorted Anne Hidalgo.
Despite disagreement with the Paris town hall, the police chief decided to relocate drug users from the Eole gardens in the 19th arrondissement late September to Porte de la Villette, where they had been grouped together since the spring to relieve the neighbouring Stalingrad district.
Since the September about a hundred crack users have been relocated to Porte de la Villette to the north-east of the capital.
If this new removal is agreed, it will be their third relocation in nine months.
