The socialist leader of the French city of Marseille has requested that the central government in effect declare his entire city a no-go zone, due to its endemic and escalating culturally enriched violence. Today, however, the interior minister refused the request.

Via Vlad Tepes, an article with the latest from Le Figaro. Many thanks to C. B. Sashenka for the translation:

For the Interior Minister Valls, to comply with the request of the socialist president of the urban community of Marseilles, Eugene Caselli, to place the entire Phoenician City (Marseille) in a Priority Security Zone (ZSP in French — Zone de Sécurité Prioritaire), would not make any sense.

A proposition that “would not be effective and would not make any sense” for Manuel Valls.

Wednesday, the Minister of Interior rejected the proposal advanced by Eugene Caselli, the socialist president of the urban community, and others before him, to classify the entire Phoenician City as a Priority Security Zone (ZSP in French).

In a letter addressed to Manuel Valls, the socialist elected official complains about the situation and denounces “intolerable exactions”. “I’m worried and angered. The situation has become so widespread that it warrants a maximum response”, writes the elected official Eugene Caselli, also candidate for the socialist primary elections for the local elections of Marseilles in 2014.

On France-Info, Manuel Valls rejected this radical measure: “We will not put all of Marseilles in a priority zone of safety. The ZSP’s are targeted devices”. In Marseilles, “there is only the city centre which is not in a zone of priority safety. The south and north districts are already in priority zones of safety; and in the city centre, we have created dedicated units (…) that actively patrol “, he recalled.

Eugene Caselli had advanced this proposal after a wave of new violence at night on Monday to Tuesday. A little before midnight, a body had been found partly burned in a town bordering Marseilles, in Pennes-Mirabeau. The 22-year old young man was killed by a bullet to the head. Two men in their thirties were wounded by bullets in an industrial zone of the Saint-Pierre district. Finally, a driver of a garbage truck was a victim of several paintball shootings, when he drove au niveau de la traverse de la Jarre, not far from an area in a ZSP.

But the classification of the whole of Marseilles as a priority security zone is an old claim. In August 2012, UMP senator and mayor of Marseilles, Jean-Claude Gaudin, had also made this request in Le Figaro.

Read the rest at Vlad’s place.

That description of Monday night’s violence in Marseille actually sounds like a slow night in Chicago or Detroit. Maybe those places should be designated ZPS…?

Below is a report from ANSAmed on the same topic:

Marseille Warns Government Over Crime Emergency

To Interior Minister Valls, whole city priority security zone

(ANSAmed) — Paris, July 31 — Marseille, facing a growing crime emergency, needs a special statute to guarantee security, according to an appeal launched by the president of the urban community in France’s second-largest city, Eugene Caselli, in a letter to Interior Minister Manuel Valls.

Caselli asked the government to include the whole city in the list of the so-called priority security zones (ZSP), a statute normally attributed only to specific crime-infested districts including areas of Paris’ banlieue.

‘Confronted with a new wave of violence which struck Marseille in the night between Monday and Tuesday, I wrote to Minister Valls to ask for more police and for the whole city to be listed as a priority security zone’, said the Socialist politician, who is also running in the primaries with which Marseille residents will choose the left-wing candidate competing in the 2014 municipal elections. ‘I am worried and angry’, said the president of Marseille Metropole, which is this year European capital of culture. ‘The situation is such that the response must be as significant as the emergencies we are facing’.

Shortly before midnight on Monday the body of a young man killed by a head wound was found in the port city. The same evening, two 30-year-olds were wounded after a man riding a scooter opened fire in the Saint-Pierre neighbourhood.

For a complete listing of previous enrichment news, see The Cultural Enrichment Archives.