Anne Hidalgo announces the closure to drug addicts of a park in the north of Paris

Published on : 06/30/2021 – 11:28

“Tomorrow, the garden will once again become a garden for residents, for families. There will be no more drug addicts in the garden,” said Tuesday, June 29, Anne Hidalgo on LCI. “I set a limit” at the end of June, she recalled, without giving details on a possible evacuation or on where the drug addicts would go.

According to a source familiar with the matter, the mayor of Paris confirmed to residents that the gardens of Éole (18th arrondissement) would no longer welcome crack users after June 30.

>> In pictures: “24 hours in the hell of” crackland “in Paris”

The park will in theory be impossible for them to access thanks to the “reinforcement of the human presence and the police officers” who will have for mission “to ensure that no one enters the park” with a knife, in an “unstable state” or by “having a behavior likely to endanger”, added this source to AFP. An “activity program” for residents is also planned in the park.

However, “we are not going to go on June 30 from shadow to light”, it is an “intermediate sequence”, added this source, according to who “between making them disappear miraculously and leaving them in free wheel, there is an in-between “.

New devices under study

According to Anne Hidalgo, “the question being asked is the treatment. I asked the government to open together a place” to take care of them but, “for the moment, there is a divergence of views within the government “between those who want places of accompaniment and” others who explain that it is enough to move the problem “, she added.

>> To see: In the north-east of Paris, residents overwhelmed by the presence of drug addicts

“I want us to open a place that comes to the aid of drug addicts because we cannot just evacuate the subject without treating it”, repeated the mother of Paris who had written to Prime Minister Jean Castex, at the beginning of June, to ask “new support systems adapted to the problems of crack users”.

In order to relieve the inhabitants of the Stalingrad district, crack users have been grouped together since mid-May, in the evening, in this place that drug addicts used to frequent during the day before migrating to Stalingrad, 500 meters away, overnight. The public garden is open to them until 1 a.m., causing tension in the neighborhood.

With AFP