MARSEILLE, France (CN) — Police have made more than 230 arrests in Marseille, and 850 nationwide, in the days since President Emmanuel Macron launched a police operation to destroy France's drug trafficking networks.
The southern city's police precinct has been sharing photos and videos on X, formerly Twitter, around the clock since Macron's March 19 surprise visit. In one video, cameras follow a police unit into the Château Saint-Loup cité, or housing development, where officers search the building. The frame centers on a blackened window with a hole in the center used for drug deals.
Another post announces the arrest of a deliveryman caught with marijuana and cocaine. There are photos and videos of raids, inspections and arrests.
Up to 4,000 police officers will patrol Marseille over the course of several weeks in Operation “Place nette XXL.” The goal is to attack the entire hierarchy of networks to prevent them from coming back, thus restoring order and security. The idea is to “hit harder, more intensely, larger,” according to the police department.
Marseille is notorious as the main crossroads of drug trafficking in France.
Last year, DZ Mafia and Yoda — the city’s biggest rival gangs — were largely responsible for 49 drug-related murders in Marseille, the highest level in recent record. The bloodshed wasn’t always contained within the gangs' ranks. In September, Socayna, a 24-year-old student, was killed when a stray bullet struck her in her bedroom.
The violence has prompted nationwide attention.
Criminologist Alain Bauer — a professor at the Conservatoire National des Arts et Métiers and senior research fellow at the John Jay College of Criminal Justice in New York— says that the logic behind this operation is for Macron to “show that he’s taking action.”
“What does it consist of?” Macron explained in a video posted on his X account when the project was launched. “First ... based on the in-depth work that has been carried out for years, we identified the cases which were known, the people who we know make life impossible for neighborhoods.”
Then, 900 officers were mobilized throughout Marseille to fight against dealers, criminal networks, murderers and traffickers.
“The objective is to make the life of the traffickers and dealers, and all of the crime that accompanies them, impossible,” Macron concluded.
The city's image has been sharpened by its portrayal in films and novels. In 1971, Oscar-winning "The French Connection" told the story of the heroin trade between Marseille and New York. A few months ago, the Netflix show "Pax Massilia," which follows a fictional police brigade that takes down a drug kingpin, was a hit.
But Marseille is just one of about 10 cities throughout the country where the multi-week operation is being rolled out. So far, the operation is also active in Paris, Lyon, Lille, Clermont-Ferrand and Dijon. There was a recent “Place nette XXL” operation in La Ciotat, a small town next to Marseille.
The operation isn’t limited to drug networks. On March 22, the police department posted photos from the Saint-Charles train station, where border patrol officers inspected residency papers. They’ve also checked for driver’s license fraud along Marseille’s highways. Over the weekend, police stopped and searched cars in the central Old Port.
Gérald Darmanin, France’s interior minister, said that police will only intensify the effort.
“Our fight against drugs and dealers is total,” Darmanin wrote on X. “Now, we’re going to multiply operations that we’ve been preparing for months to hit really hard.”
There have been rallying cries across the full political spectrum — with the right asserting that crime has gotten out of hand, and the left advocating for better social services to steer young people away from the drug trade.
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