In a City Plagued by Violence, a Spike in Crime Opens Eyes Nationwide

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/09/20/world/europe/marseille-hit-by-violent-wave-of-drug-crimes.html

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MARSEILLE, France — Walid Marzouki and his girlfriend stopped their black Renault Twingo at a red light on the deserted Boulevard Casanova late one night in August. Another car pulled alongside. The driver opened his window, pulled out an automatic rifle and killed Mr. Marzouki, using more than 20 rounds.

Mr. Marzouki, 25, was a drug dealer from Marseille, the police said.

“I heard loud bursts of gunfire,” said Nina Lamraoui, 31, who lives in a building near the murder scene. “I was so terrified for my children that I told them it was a car accident.”

Mr. Marzouki was a victim of one of the most violent waves of gang crime ever to hit this city on France’s southeast coast. In nine months, 20 people have been killed in Marseille and the surrounding area, according to the police.

The magnitude of violence, which the police say is committed mostly by drug dealers using combat weapons, has pushed the new Socialist government to lay out an ambitious plan to help this city of 800,000, described by Interior Minister Manuel Valls as “in great distress.”

The government was also pushed to act after Samia Ghali, a Socialist who represents the impoverished and troubled 15th and 16th Arrondissements here, called for the army to intervene. Her request, which many viewed as exaggerated, has nevertheless drawn news media attention to the city’s struggle with gang leaders.

The killing of Mr. Marzouki has not been solved, the police said. But they blamed the drug trade for the recent killings, specifically dealers from the “Quartiers Nord,” the predominantly immigrant districts of northern Marseille. Top dealers can easily make 100,000 euros a month (about $131,000), the police said, relying on violence and murder to intimidate others or defend their territory. Unlike the United States, guns are tightly regulated in Europe, but the gangs have armed themselves with weapons obtained on the black market.

“We are confronted by inhuman situations,” said Jean-Louis Martini, the local spokesman of Synergie Officiers, one of the major police unions in France. “It becomes terrifying, because it has no limits.”

Marseille, one of France’s poorest cities, has long been a haven for gangs, which first surfaced to control prostitution. It was home to a major heroin ring known as “The French Connection,” the basis for the 1971 film. And like many port cities, it has been identified with smuggling and political corruption.

Today, experts and police officers say that the number of crimes, mostly related to marijuana trafficking, has not increased significantly. But the crimes have become much more violent in the past year. Police officers and residents are particularly worried about the increasing use of automatic and semiautomatic rifles, especially the Kalashnikov. Knockoff versions are made in many eastern European countries and China, and cost about $1,300.

They were introduced in France after the breakup of the former Yugoslavia and became more available recently after the chaos that followed the uprising in Libya. The police said about 300 Kalashnikovs have been intercepted in Marseille this year.

The drug networks are also larger and less structured. “It is hard for us to dismantle those networks,” said David-Olivier Reverdy, a former policeman. “Until now, we come after the crime and count the dead.”

Last week, Prime Minister Jean-Marc Ayrault paid a two-day visit to Marseille to discuss the security situation and urge an end to what he called the city’s “inertia” in the economic crisis. He announced a plan that would increase the number of police officers in the districts affected by crime and trafficking, and also include longer-term initiatives to alleviate poverty.

The program was welcomed by experts. “We must stop thinking that this delinquency happens by magic and that people were born with this illness in them,” said Laurent Mucchielli, a sociologist, in the magazine Le Point. “We must confront school failure, unemployment and the desertification of certain districts.”

According to Insee, the country’s national statistics agency, up to 45 percent of male residents aged 15 to 29 were jobless in 2009 in several poor arrondissements of Marseille.

For Ms. Ghali, the northern districts she serves have been abandoned by the state and left to the authority of gangs and to dealers who “are able to shoot the friend they ate and slept with the previous night.” The economic distress in Europe has reinforced the phenomenon. “Before we had temporary work,” she said in an interview. “Now there is more unemployment and no temporary jobs.”

Marseille was not hit hard by the 2005 riots that inflamed the Paris suburbs. But some people believe that its embrace of multiculturalism and strong local identity no longer protect it from social unrest.

“We got overwhelmed by the expansion of this new delinquency,” said Mr. Martini, the police official.

The police say that the drug gang progression follows a common pattern. A young man drops out of school to become a “chouf,” the Arabic word for “watchman,” often paid about $65 a day to alert dealers when police officers enter his neighborhood. A good chouf is given the opportunity to drive a “go fast,” which consists of bringing marijuana in from Spain as fast as he can without being caught.

Mr. Marzouki, the drug dealer who died in his car last month, was wanted by the police. “He had risen in the past five years,” said a police officer. “He went from being a driver of go fasts to one of the main importers of drugs in Marseille.” (Mr. Marzouki’s girlfriend, Anaïs, was wounded but survived the attack.)

Mr. Marzouki dropped out of school at 13. His mother cleaned houses, his father worked at temporary jobs and his brother was jailed for petty crime.

“Walid was a good guy, a nice guy” said Inés, 20, a nurse who went to school with Mr. Marzouki. “We are used to murders here — it is ‘mektoub,’ ” the Arabic word for fate.

But her fatalism is not shared by others in the northern districts who have been terrorized by the violence. “It’s a city of crazy people,” said a man who works near the spot where Mr. Marzouki was killed, who spoke on condition he not be identified. “If a 16-year-old kid can use a Kalashnikov, it means that he never experienced a childhood, and his parents never cuddled him.”

Mr. Marzouki’s parents may not have cuddled him. But placed on that light pole on the Boulevard Casanova are flowers and a note, written in what appears to be red lipstick, saying: “Walid, we’ll love you forever.”