While the commune of Béziers issued an order on Monday April 22 prohibiting minors from remaining without an adult at night, two mayors, of Sommières and Montfaucon, have already tried the curfew. With this assessment: the announcement effect gave results and no verbalization was drawn up.
The Gard department has the particularity that two elected officials have implemented decrees leading to curfews: for those under 18, between 11 p.m. and 6 a.m. For what purpose and for what effectiveness?
“It was common sense, not a political posture, parents who don’t do their job, we have to do it for them”, thus defends Pierre Martinez, the mayor of Sommières. He had taken out an order at the end of November 2020, for fifteen days, which he had renewed once.
“Young people were burning trash cans”
“Young people were burning trash cans, there was unrest, we took this order which was validated by the prefecture” he remembers.
“We did not fall into dramaturgy, there was this phenomenon which was starting to tire people, we had decided to strike hard to make it stop, but it was not liberticidal, but, I repeat , common sense: at 13, you’re at home at 11 p.m., not outside, the little ones at home, period.”
Pierre Martinez assures him: the announcement made it possible to bear fruit with the help of the gendarmes, “the minors outside have dried up and so have the crimes” even if there was no verbalization.
And he also hired a neighborhood mediator “and everything is back to normal” said the one who never drew the decree again.
“It was a one-off measure, in the long term, I doubt the effectiveness”
The mayor of Sommières also defends the short term: “It was a one-off measure, it had to be respected, but in the long term, I doubt its effectiveness.”
Conversely, in Gard Rhodanien, the mayor of Montfaucon, 1,500 inhabitants, also issued an order in May 2022, still in force for two years, prohibiting people under the age of 18 from traveling alone between 11 p.m. and 6 a.m., under penalty of fine (payable by parents for children under 13).
His text has never been revised. He is surprised himself: “I alerted the prefecture saying that I was going to take this curfew, I was told that it was going to be repealed, but I received nothing, it is still valid and in place” says Olivier Robelet.
In fact, he wanted to fight against “the rampage” of a part of the commune when the tradition of “planting in May” (cutting down a tree and replanting it, editor’s note), “was going into a tailspin, it was becoming unbearable and 10 or 11 year old kids were there at 2 a.m. and insulting the police. But these are just a few idiots out of a huge majority of very good young people”.
“We never verbalized”
However, the elected official recognizes it: “We were never fined for that, the order was not activated. But we talked about it, and if the only effect of that was to have peace, so much the better! My curfew was to say stop.
However, the elected official, who does not have a municipal police force, is satisfied because the competent gendarmes took action against the disruptors. “Minors were sentenced to court for damage, finally! And setting fires is not incivility, it is a crime.”
