“We feel like we’re bailing out the sea with a teaspoon,” laments the mayor of Grenoble

“It really feels like we’re scooping up the sea with a teaspoon.”deplores Monday August 26 on the microphone of France Inter Éric Piolle, ecologist mayor of Grenoble, while the Grenoble agglomeration has experienced several shootings in recent weeks. Mid-August, the prosecutor of Grenoble, Éric Vaillant denounced a “intense gang warfare” around drug trafficking.

The Grenoble mayor believes that “the government is failing”accusing both the current executive that “the previous ones”. For Eric Piolle, it is a “failure in public health, in security and in the use of our resources”He therefore considers the government strategy to be ineffective, despite the increase in police numbers and cooperation between “the prosecution, the police” and the municipality.

The mayor of Grenoble considers that this work of “daily cooperation” “probably avoids having some young people who fall into dealing” and to “surely destabilizes some networks from time to time”. But Eric Piolle fears that this will cause “not to reduce drug consumption or trafficking”and this, as much to “Grenoble than anywhere else in France”.

Eric Piolle also confides that he has “the feeling of being a beggar” by asking the different “Interior Ministers to give us more police officers”. “Sometimes, staff arrive, but then another mayor makes the same request and staff leave.”he regrets. Faced with this situation, the mayor of Grenoble recommends taking inspiration from what has been done, for example, in Portugal, which “decriminalized drug use and views it as a public health issue”.