Drug trafficking, shootings, violence…in the upper districts of Valence, in Fontbarlettes and Le Plan, fear seizes the inhabitants who call for help from the public authorities. The story of an “urban guerrilla” daily life a few bus stops from downtown Valencia.
“Terror. Permanent anguish. The malaise of our children”. In Valence, the Fontbarlettes district, its market with welcoming stalls, the Plan district, where people gladly treat themselves to coffees in one of the only shops that have remained open… All this now gives way to a any other reality. That of women and families, in agony, surrounded by violence and insecurity.
“Frankly, I’m afraid of everything. I’m afraid to go to the market, I’m afraid to go to the park. I’m afraid to leave my children outside. Delinquency has taken over the residents”, underlines, with a covered face, a mother residing in the Plan district.
In these areas, urban violence is synonymous with normality. Since January 1, no less than 9 shots have been fired. The latest, Saturday January 14, caused a serious injury from Kalashnikov attacks.
“My children sleep with me because they’re scared. ‘Mom shoots’. It’s hellish. You have to live with it. It’s not ‘pan’, it’s machine guns. We’re at war. I see stuff about Ukraine and I think it’s the same in my neighborhood”, adds another resident, also anonymously. “It doesn’t even shock kids anymore to see drug trafficking, to find syringes”.
/regions/2023/02/03/63dcd84020523_fontbarlettes.jpg)
Accustomed, the children come out despite everything traumatized. And it is not with neighborhood activities that they could escape. “You pay 10 bucks a day for your children to draw on tables from morning to night. At best, they go to the park”, complains a breathless resident.
“Before my big three, they went to the center. You had to see the activities they did. They went to the swimming pool. Now he has closed everything so that all the inhabitants go to the aquatic center in the city. He really believes that Do people from the neighborhoods have the means to pay for the aquatic center for their kids? It’s 10 euros for the entrance.”
A resident of the Plan district
A bakery that has remained closed for a long time, a hairdresser who is about to cease its activity… little by little, the shops are deserting the area.
The only refuge for children: school. “Children would be the best when they come to school. They find security there, be it physical, be it cognitive, be it psycho-affective and from there I think that we have children who manage to leave a certain number of things outside. explains Serge Bessède, director of the Pierre Brossolette school.
It is still necessary that the anxieties of the parents do not rub off on them. “In the neighborhood, which is already sufficiently enclosing, we have parents who suddenly no longer spoke and no longer had a place to express themselves”, adds the director. And behind, repercussions on the children. “Todaywe felt children who are more and more permeable to the anxieties of the parents”.
For him, there is no question of improving the learning of children in these neighborhoods without taking into account the situation of the parents. This is why the school has provided them with a listening unit supervised by psychologists.
It allowed families to“express their fears, anxieties” so that “these problems are taken care of collectively”, emphasizes Pascal Clément, academic director of the Drôme.
A device that gives voice to these people “invisible”who do not feel “not legitimate to be there”, “non-existent” And “not listened to”. If the public authorities want to prevent new students from leaving school in these neighborhoods, like Pierre Brossolette who lost around forty children to endemic violence in the surrounding area, “We have to react now. Talking is good, but action is needed”, react the inhabitants of Plan and Fontbarlettes.
/regions/2023/01/07/63b93e1c07637_maxnewsworldfive681127.jpg)
The Prefect of Drôme, Elodie Degiovanni, also admits that these problems of insecurity must be resolved as quickly as possible. “But our action is a long-term one,” she specifies.
We are present wherever the municipality can be, but security comes under the power of the State and when the State does not take its responsibility, everything is on the fly, we see it at the moment,” said Nicolas Daragon. “The means of action available to me are not spectacular. Most of the tools available to the State are fund tools that are long term.” Investigations of funds to fight against drug trafficking are in progress, the authorities tell us, and evening diagnoses will have to be carried out to better assess the feeling of insecurity of the inhabitants.