More 150 scooters and motorcycles have been seized for a week during nearly 3,000 police and gendarmerie operations against urban rodeos, Gérald Darmanin said on Twitter on Tuesday. In total, since August 8, 14,000 law enforcement officers have checked 42,165 people, made 338 arrests and seized 157 vehicles, according to the operations report cited by the Minister of the Interior, who announced an intensification of checks, after that a girl was seriously injured in Val-d’Oise in early August.
“As of tomorrow (Wednesday), each police station will carry out at least three anti-rodeo operations per day”, assured Gérald Darmanin. More than 80 operations will also be carried out on Tuesday evening throughout the Paris conurbation, explained the police headquarters on Twitter.
At the beginning of August, a drama had put this phenomenon back in the center of the news: a seven-year-old child had been seriously injured during an urban rodeo in Pontoise (Val-d’Oise), where the 18-year-old motorcyclist had to first fled before going to the police station the next day. This young man was indicted and imprisoned on August 8. With a head trauma, the girl came out of a coma, the family lawyer announced on Monday. Previously, on June 8, during an urban rodeo in Rennes, a 19-year-old man died after being hit by a motorcycle.
A 2018 law strengthening the law against motorized rodeos provides for sentences of up to five years in prison for their authors. “Rodeo is linked to good weather, especially in summer in areas bordering forests”said last week to AFP a commissioner of Seine-et-Marne, during a control operation. “We don’t have the right to chase them for an essential reason, which is that we can’t afford to compromise the safety of the author of the rodeo who will inevitably take risks for himself and also for road users”, she added.