“I am proof that even if you grow up in a single-parent family and in a city, you can get by. » At 37, Samir Mesbah joined the Villeneuve-sur-Lot police station, as police captain. For a little over a month, he has been responsible for coordinating services, “being the relay between the base body and management” for the 23 police officers who work there. A role that he took on within a team made up of colleagues all older than him: “But, since I have been here, I have never felt that I was not legitimate, being the youngest. Quite the contrary…”
Samir Mesbah says it without complexes: he is proud “of his career”. Born in Paris, arriving at the age of 2 in the Mirail district of Toulouse, he is the first generation of his family born in France, he who was “raised by a single mother”. Even when he was very young, Samir Mesbah wanted to join the police, but avoided saying it too loudly: “It was rather frowned upon in the neighborhood”. So, with his baccalaureate in hand, he began by heading towards studies that had nothing to do with security: a BTS in international commerce. “I then decided to move far from Mirail, to be closer to my school and to escape the insecurity of the neighborhood. »
From base to command
In 2009, once he had completed his diploma, far from the Mirail towers, Samir Mesbah dared to make his childhood dream come true: joining the police. “I entered through the back door in 2010 as security assistant,” he recalls. Then, by chance, the thirty-year-old finds himself assigned to the neighborhood where he spent his childhood. A return which “ultimately was not a difficulty for me. I was even an added value for the police station, because I knew the area well. I did receive a few threats, but leaving was out of the question. This would have vindicated those who uttered them. »
He will stay there for four years, until he successfully passes the internal peacekeeping competition. “I like knowing that I started my career from the ground up. » After training in Saint-Malo, then in Nice, Samir Mesbah took his first assignment in Paris, in the 13the district, “among what we call the Boers, a unit responsible for controlling the transport of people, in particular VTCs and taxis,” explains the police captain. I stayed there for seven years. »
In 2022, Samir Mesbah, as ambitious as ever, wanted to move up the ranks and took the officer exam, which he passed again: “I needed to discover new facets of my job as a police officer. And I wanted to come back and settle in the South-West. » Villeneuve-sur-Lot was therefore the right opportunity, even if the new captain “knew neither Lot-et-Garonne nor Villeneuve-sur-Lot. I was struck by the fact that in this charming little town, which seems quiet, we encounter the same problems as in the big cities, in particular a lot of traffic offenses and refusal to comply. »
