“Many young people carry an Opinel with them, just in case.” With a budding mustache and a child's look, Abdoulaye, 15, talks about a fact that frightens him: the trivialization of carrying knives by teenagers of his age, in the Paris region, who can go so far as to kill each other over “troubles.” “between neighborhoods.
October, Aulnay-sous-Bois (Seine-Saint-Denis): a 16-year-old boy, fatally injured with an Opinel blow by another 17-year-old. November, Sarcelles (Val-d'Oise): a 17-year-old teenager killed in the same way by a Sarcellois of the same age. December, Paris: a 16-year-old victim of a fatal brawl near a high school, a suspect of the same age imprisoned.
Abdoulaye (not his real name) follows these chilling facts. One of the victims, Ali, was his friend. He describes him as “generous, always in a good mood” and “very good at Fortnite”, a video game where you fight until the last survivor.
In his neighborhood of Sarcelles, Ali was killed in the middle of the afternoon, on November 12, very close to his home, he who no longer went out “too much”, according to his friends, after having given up “the troubles”.
But “one day he came out, they got off the bus, they hit him. It was him, it could have been someone else,” assures Abdoulaye. “It touched us, his death, we cried, we had hatred towards the other neighborhood.”
– “Preventative” –
Why do so many teenagers go out with a knife? Abdoulaye explains that “it’s preventive”. “You never know what can happen when you meet someone from another neighborhood. When you're outside your neighborhood, you're always careful about where you're going, who's next to you.” he said, approved by another high school student.
The stories can start from nothing: “The two +neighborhoods+ cross paths, look at each other badly…” or “one +neighborhood+ wanted to catch someone from the other neighborhood…”, they explain.
Abdoulaye says he doesn't know where the “confusion” between his Chantepie and Vignes Blanches neighborhoods comes from. “It's from a long time ago… If you say you're from Chantepie, there are some who will hit you, 'crash' you. Others who won't do anything to you. It depends on the people.. .”
– “A lesson” –
“In the same neighborhood, there are some who walk quietly and others who don’t,” summarizes, anonymously, another young person, aged 20.
By carrying a knife, “some people protect themselves”. “It's either you or him (…) Either you are injured or killed, in front of you, they are not going to give you a gift,” explains this hooded young man, met on December 1 during a march in memory of Ali in Sarcelles.
This fall, the Val-d'Oise prefecture publicized on the networks “tranquilization operations” carried out around high schools, with police searching students' bags in search of “weapons and weapons by destination”.
In Aulnay-sous-Bois, on October 11, a 16-year-old boy, Meissane, was killed by a “big opinel” shot. A source close to the investigation considers the motive for the homicide ridiculous, “a stab in a leg, to teach a lesson, without being aware of touching the femoral bone”.
“In the spring, unpleasant comments were posted on a social network by high school students, the matter remained there, until a meeting in the fast-food restaurant: some young people then recognized some of the authors of the comments, “we seeks explanations then stabbings are carried out,” explains another source close to the investigation.
– In the schoolbag –
The carrying of knives by teenagers therefore seems to be spreading, and earlier and earlier.
“The number of times we have school reports telling us that they have surprised a certain student who, in his schoolbag, had brought back a knife taken from his kitchen because he felt threatened…”, said anonymously to AFP a police source, for 30 years in Seine-Saint-Denis.
“At one time, anyone who had a knife, no one would have come up against him, but he himself would not have used it like that. Now, it's 'I plant, I want to kill' or at least , if I don't want to, I don't realize that by stabbing twice in the abdomen, I risk killing”, said the police officer, referring to “a liberation of the gesture”, “without hindsight”.
For him, “it plays a role” in the fact that continuous channels and social networks “relay ad nauseum everything that happens”, “completely trivializing” the violent act.
A municipal police official from Aulnay also believes that “these young people live in a parallel world, that of the Internet, of video games”. “They are not aware of the risk. And there is frantic competition on the networks, all this buzz to get people talking about themselves, about their neighborhood: on the internet, there are people who constantly feed on violence.”
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