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Incivility can turn the lives of residents of sensitive neighborhoods into hell. In Rennes, it is not the police but the mediators of a private company who are responsible for appeasing the spirits.
These visits are an opportunity for the inhabitants to break habits. Funded by social landlords and the city, mediators prevent conflicts but they are also an intervention team that responds to emergency calls. Most of the time, it is noise pollution. For two years, a private company has been providing the service. There is no longer any question of recruiting informal mediators from the neighborhood. They are graduates in psychology, sociology and trained specifically in the field.
They are not police officers, do not have weapons, but sometimes intervene in place of the police. In some neighborhoods, mediation ensures a less frowned upon presence than the police. For a police officer, these mediations do what the police can no longer do, due to lack of resources. A privatization that cuts them off from essential sources of information, regrets a police officer. The company is now present in around fifteen cities in France. It has 80 employees, professional mediators.