Drug trafficking in Gaillard: mayor targets consumers with shock campaign
Seven shootings last summer in the Chalet district of Gaillard in Haute-Savoie. Mayor Antoine Bloin strikes back with posters directly targeting drug buyers.
"Your purchase causes shootings": Gaillard tackles drug buyers
TF1 Info reports that despite multiple police operations, drug trafficking continues unabated in the Chalet district of Gaillard — a municipality of 12,000 residents in Haute-Savoie, in immediate proximity to the Swiss border. On the day of the report, a lookout was posted at the entrance to the district, just a few metres from active traffickers.
Faced with this situation, mayor Antoine Bloin has chosen an unprecedented response: an advertising campaign aimed not at dealers, but at their customers. The poster he is displaying shows bullet holes from firearms and a transaction between dealer and consumer, accompanied by the slogan: "Your purchase causes shootings". "It is aimed at buyers who come to the district to conduct their transactions," he explains.
From Friday, 4 September onwards, these visuals were installed on bus shelters and advertising panels along the route used by customers of the dealing point. "Let's try to appeal to people's intelligence, to raise consumers' awareness of their actions. They come to the district, it takes a minute, they do their transactions, they leave. The problem is that repeating it all day long ends up creating flows of money. Flows of money that today attract a desire to seize power," the municipal official argues.
Seven shootings in a single summer
The Chalet district has suffered for several years from violence linked to scores being settled between rival networks. Seven shootings were recorded over the course of last summer alone, a territorial war that forces residents to remain barricaded in their homes. One resident agreed to testify: "This poster is a good thing. But people aren't aware of what it can do. My son took drugs for 20 years, it completely ruined him, his life is finished."
The turnover of this dealing point is estimated at between 5,000 and 10,000 euros per day. Some young people in the district, however, doubt the effectiveness of the approach. "Consumers don't give a damn. Where their product comes from, what it caused, what it will cause later on... It won't change anything," one of them responds.
The Swiss border, a recurring obstacle to arrests
Proximity to Switzerland structurally complicates the work of law enforcement. "They run to the other side of the watercourse and find themselves in Switzerland, 'out of reach' of the police," Antoine Bloin points out. This geographical constraint limits the scope of standard operations and is pushing the municipality to seek other levers of action.
Residents remain divided on the campaign. "It's unacceptable to leave things like this. It's good already to do this, you have to start with something," approves one mother. A retired person is more reserved: "I'm not sure that a simple poster will be enough to stop drugs." Video surveillance cameras are furthermore to be deployed in the district in the coming weeks.
Source: TF1 Info