The rate of homicides in the department, struggling with traffic, is almost ten times higher than the national average.
Le Monde with AFP
It is, for the government, to stop the chronic violence which affects Guyana, largely linked to arms trafficking, narcotics and illegal gold panning. In conclusion of the Security Assizes organized by the Guyanese elected officials, the ministers of public accounts, Gabriel Attal, of the Interior, Gérald Darmanin, and justice, Eric Dupond-Moretti, promised Cayenne to strengthen effective and means for Annrate the “scourge” of crime.
On the front of the fight against drug trafficking, Mr. Attal announced an increase in customs staff at Cayenne airport “with a doubling of the twenty-seven current agents”. “Ten additional agents will be recruited by the end of 2023” and “an additional team of master chiens will be awarded to the airport by April”, he promised. This reinforcement will bring the number of cynophile teams to four. The installation of “a container scanner for the port and a luggage scanner at the airport” has also been announced, Mr. Attal specifying that “the device has already been delivered to the port of Cayenne and will be operational in the coming weeks “.
Furthermore, eighteen gendarmes and seven investigators from the antisputing office will reinforce, while fifty additional police and gendarmes will be installed at the airport “so that 100 % of the flights are checked,” said Gérald Darmanin . “Today, [alone] one in three flights,” conceded the Minister of the Interior, whose services also promised an investment of “one million euros per year” in video protection.
Four additional gendarmerie brigades
In order to strengthen the fight against gangs, the Minister of the Interior announced the creation “in the year” of one hundred and fifty positions of police and gendarmes. A raid police branch “will be created in the first half of 2023” and the mobile gendarmerie squadron arrived on September 7 in reinforcement “will be perpetuated,” he detailed. To this squadron will be added “four new gendarmerie brigades: two river for the Maroni and the Oyapock and two roads,” he continued. With forty-nine police and gendarmes for 10,000 inhabitants against thirty-four in mainland France, according to the prefecture, Guyana is already largely endowed with police.
On the justice side, Eric Dupond-Moretti had announced on Thursday the arrival in January 2023 of a new “emergency support brigade”, endowed with “four magistrates of the siege, three magistrates of the prosecution and three new clerks” , in order to relieve local services, which are crumbling under the procedures. He also promised the arrival of five contract workers “in the coming days”, before the creation of five new magistrate positions next September.
Against the background of great poverty, the Department of South America holds the record for the greatest number of homicides per capita in France, despite a massive police presence. Since the beginning of the year, thirty homicides have occurred in this territory of 300,000 inhabitants. According to the ministerial statistical service of internal security, the homicide rate was established there at 11.2 per 100,000 inhabitants between 2016 and 2021, against 1.2 on average, or almost ten times more.
Guyana is one of the rotating plates of cocaine traffic between South America and France. Each day, dozens of “mules” embark on daily flights to Paris, loaded with “dumplings” or “eggs” of white powder which they conceal or ingest. On the eve of the visit of the ministers, the attorney general of Cayenne, Joël Sollier, announced the end of a controversial experiment. From the 1 er July, the prosecution ranked without follow -up the seizures of less than 1.5 kilo of cocaine, to “decrease the load” that the traffic weigh on its activity. Local elected officials and NGOs had deplored an undisputed and “inappropriate” initiative.