Concerns over the withdrawal of police-population cohesion delegates in the neighborhoods

Les délégués interviennent à Nîmes dans le cadre du dispositif Participation citoyenne.

The presidents of the neighborhood committees and of the UCQNM (Union of Neighborhood Committees of Nîmes Métropole) do not understand this decision.

These are the first two neighborhoods in Nîmes to be officially concerned about the withdrawal of the police-population cohesion delegates. The presidents of the committees of Puech-du-Teil and Saint Césaire-Mas Roman still can't believe it: these civilian reservists of the national police have been sidelined “since the start of the school year in September” for an indefinite period.“It's an interruption at least until the end of the year, due to lack of budget, the representative for my sector told me“, explains Michel Aubert, president of the Union of Neighborhood Committees of Nîmes Métropole (UCQNM) and the Montaury committee.
These two delegates played an important role in Nîmes as part of the system to combat delinquency and burglaries, Citizen Participation, set up in 2011: it was to them that trained volunteer residents turned to report any anomalies. For Jean-Daniel Depoudent and René Genti, presidents of the committees of Puech-du-Teil and Saint-Césaire, this withdrawal appears as "an aberration". “After the Olympic and Paralympic Games, everyone was saying that everything went well in terms of security. That's true and so much the better, but Paris suddenly became the only city concerned with the security of its residents and the neighborhoods of other cities were neglected for the period of the Games and now well beyond, deplores Jean-Daniel Depoudent. Nîmes is no exception to the rule."

"The equivalent of a community police force"

Puech-du-Teil was the first sector in the city to join what was then called Voisins vigilants.“It's been 13 years now since we signed the charter with the City and the State because there were so many incivilities of all kinds. It has borne fruit. The agreement between the committee, on the one hand, and the national and municipal police, on the other, has contributed greatly to the spectacular drop in incivility."

On the Saint-Césaire and Mas Roman side, the message is identical: "The police-population cohesion delegates are a necessary link between the committee, and with it the residents, and the police", explains René Genti, the president. “It is the equivalent of a community police force because the committees are the eyes of the neighborhood, summarizes Michel Aubert, president of the UCQNM. Today we no longer have any contacts to whom we can report problems. Apart from the municipal elected official… All the committees adhering to Citizen Participation, 21 in Nîmes, are concerned.”
And these three presidents demand that these key positions be reinstated. Asked several times, the Prefecture, representing the State in the Gard, did not provide any additional explanations.

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