Did drug lords end the French riots?

It wasn’t President Macron who brought six days of rioting in France to an end, nor the brave bands of mothers who called for calm in some of the inner-city estates. It wasn’t even the presence of 45,000 police and gendarmes on the streets that persuaded the rioters, arsonists, vandals and looters to stand down. Instead, it seems that it was the drug gangs who decided enough is enough. Having so many boys in blue patrolling the streets was bad for business and so gang leaders exerted their influence and ordered the young hoodlums back to their bedrooms. 

That, at least, was the news broken to Macron at the start of this week when he dropped by a police station in the 17th arrondissement of Paris. Pressing the flesh with his worn-out police officers, Macron asked: “But these kids, who do they listen to?” Back came the response: “The dealers, Monsieur le President.” 

It was a brutal reality check for the president of the Republic — and an embarrassing one given that it was widely picked up the French press. 

Other police officers painted a similar picture, though they also attributed the restoration of calm to their dedication of their fellow men and women. But were it not for the dealers — by which they mean the drug gangs which control many of the banlieues — there would still be trouble on the streets.

“Dealers told the rioters to stop the violence so that they could resume drug dealing,” explained Rudy Manna, a spokesman for the Alliance South police union. With such a heavy police presence in city centers, said Manna, it had become impossible for the gangs to sell their product and so the drug lords flexed their muscles. And their muscles are considerable. In Marseille alone this year, twenty-three have been killed in drug-related shootings and the violence is spreading across France. It would be foolhardy to defy these gangs.

According to Frédéric Ploquin, an expert in organized crime: “Drug traffickers are pragmatic people, they are shopkeepers, admittedly illegal, but shopkeepers nonetheless. And like shopkeepers, they don’t like to see their windows smashed.”

So brazen are the drug gangs in cities such as Marseille, Lyon and Paris, that they paint the prices of their products on walls and these trading posts can see a turnover of up to €100,000 ($109,000) a day. It is also a way for the drug gangs to demonstrate their power and influence to the Republic. They let the kids run wild for a few days and then orders were issued. “Letting these young people go to loot, break and burn also meant marking their territory,” said Ploquin. “They say to the police: ‘Keep out of the way, this is our place, we’re the law.’”

It wasn’t lost on the French media that while the city center of Marseille suffered serious pillaging during the riots, the housing estates to the north were relatively calm. This is where the drug gangs are based. It also goes some way to perhaps explaining why Marseille — the capital of France’s drug trade, which is a €3 billion ($3.25 billion) industry — has avoided any significant Islamist outrage, despite its large Muslim population.

A member of the city’s drug squad told Le Figaro last week: “Marseille has always steered clear of riots, as it has terrorism… there is a stronger attraction for serious crime, and therefore a need for peace and quiet so as not to disrupt business.”

Karine Sabourin, a magistrate in Marseille since 2013, said that there is a form of “social contract” between the police and the drug lords. “There is no institutionalized lack of respect for the police and the justice system,” she said. In return, a blind eye is often turned to the activities of the drug gangs, such as the existence of drug dealing points in close proximity to police stations.

President Macron was in Marseille at the start of last week when the rioting in France started. He was there on a three day to visit to unveil a series of measures to help what he described as one of the Republic’s ”poorest and most vibrant cities.” Whether his plan will work remains to be seen; it probably depends on whether they meet with the approval of the people who run the city and, it appears, the country: the drug gangs.

This article was originally published on The Spectator’s UK site.