Marseilles' Routine Train Robberies

An epidemic of train robberies are starting to get out of hand near the French port city of Marseille, the French press reports this week.

Evoking the methods of train robbers of old, attack after attack is taking place in the northern municipality of Saint-Louis. Things are getting so out of hand, the authorities might, just might, start having to do something about it.

Loosely translated from the account carried in the regional newspaper La Provence:

A simple garbage container across the rails. This is how four men succeeded in stopping a 700-meter long train, carrying 30 railcars, in order to steal some of the computer hardware the train was transporting yesterday morning, around 5:30 AM.

It was a particularly audacious method of operation which is starting to become almost commonplace in this sector, near the city of Consolat, in Saint-Louis, where the train tracks border housing….
…
The conductor had just enough time to stop the train and to see the robbers open
several containers. In cases like this, the procedure is clear: the agent is supposed to sound the alarm, in order to interrupt traffic, and then to take refuge inside his cabin so as to be sheltered from assault. This time, the conductor was not harmed, but this kind of attack is starting to seriously concern the corporation, as much as the phenomenon seems to be gaining in scope.

According to Joël Naudin, from the Sud-Rail union, the number of attacks is significant: “On average, there are two per month. This has almost become routine. The last one, came at the end of the month of May. We came near to having a catastrophe when the conductor got down to see if the locomotive had been damaged. At that moment, another train brushed past him. There must be a real concerted effort to secure the zone. Every one should do everything possible before a tragedy occurs.” …

…For months, even years, [Daniel Tourlan, the regional head of the CGT union(Confederation Generale du Travaille)] has been familiar with this phenomenon which has been occurring regularly in Saint-Louis. And for him, the SNCF [“Societe Nationale des Chemins de Fer”, the French National Railway Company] is not taking account of the situation:

“It’s been going on for years. … There used to be fences that were put in place, but these were destroyed. There, we need manpower. Today, the politics of it is the calculated risk, not prevention. As long as there is not a sufficient number of attacks, they won’t intervene as they should. Not until the problem becomes serious. For now, they are not taking measures in accordance to the problem.

For the union leader, the question of the agents’ security might come up quite quickly in another sector, that of the new line between Aix and Marseille, soon to be in service: “There also, we are rather concerned. In regards to security, if we do not want a replay of the OK Corral, there must be measures taken. The number of officers in the Suge [General Surveillance] is low and out of proportion to the problems the region is facing.”

The report fails to mention if the thieves make use of the famous Canadian phrase, "Hands Up!"
(Well, it was an American who said it... but he said it in Canada...)

Some of Marseille's other crime waves have been covered in previous Covenant Zone posts:

The attacks on bus drivers who insist that riders pay their fares, and

The attacks on grocery store owners who insist that shoppers pay for their food.

I hate sounding glib when I post about the ongoing moral and societal decay in French-speaking Europe. There are real people at the receiving end of this misery, it's not a game. I descend into sarcasm as a defensive reflex, I suspect, because of the implications of it all... my attempt at gallows humor. As a Francophile I take this downward spiral very seriously, more serious evidently than the elites whose nihilistic paralysis is helping to tilt things irrevocably for the worse.

It feels World War I all over again, only this time in urban settings, not in fortresses around Verdun or trenches along the Marne. The people are being sacrificed by those in positions of authority, sacrificed to utopian idolatry. In "the Great War", obstinate French generals refused to see what was clearly in front of their faces, lest they be forced to recognize the imbecility of their plans, and their delusions caused needless misery.

In World War I this resulted in Mutiny. What will the modern, urban, version look like?

Marseilles Predators Hunt For Their Food... In French Shops

Marseilles is being victimized by a wave of predatory thieves who view life as particularly cheap, as thugs are increasingly willing to kill... for as little as a simple sandwich.

My translation of the report carried by the Southern French newspaper La Provence:

A box of pâté, a pack of butter cookies, a litre of red wine... In all, the customer hardly had anything of value in the basket that he tried to hide while passing through the check-out counter.

And it was to defend this pitiful snack that the thief, a 37-year old man, waved two knives under the nose of the cashier Friday morning, at the ED supermarket on Jules-Cantini Avenue in Marseilles.

Similar scenario a few hours later, as the staff had barely recovered from the [earlier] shock, a second pilfering took place that almost ended very badly. Around 8:00 pm, an individual who was caught in the act of shoplifting food products from the shelves, stabbed the security guard with a knife.

Struck in the lungs, the employee was transported to the hospital, and yesterday was out of danger. Robbed, assaulted, wounded for a piece of bread?
Lately, these unbelievable cases tend to multiply in the police registers. ...

A few days earlier, the waiter of "The Little Prince" snack bar, on Canebiere, was attacked with a knife by an individual who demanded, not cash from the till... but a simple merguez-frites sandwich.

The store has recently been the victim of a racket: a group of youths demand to be paid a ransom... in kebabs.
...

Marseilles' Busy Criminals

Crime seems so rampant in the southern French city of Marseilles, that a law-abiding citizen is victimized every few minutes... and he is probably getting mighty tired of it.

From the regional paper La Provence, a quick translation of someone having a particularly bad day:

For the young computer maintenance technician in Marseilles, it wasn’t his day … Thursday, around noon, while he was driving along de la Viste Avenue, he had his laptop stolen after imprudently leaving it on his passenger seat.

A few minutes later, still driving down de la Viste, when suddenly 4 individuals on scooters intercepted him and in military style pulled him out of his car, which they then take off with. Along comes a Good Samaritan, on a scooter, who proposes that they pursue the aggressors with his vehicle. Off he goes with the stranger… who carries him all the way to the housing project on de la Viste. At the base of the building, a gang falls upon him and extorts his cel phone from him.

As bad as being robbed three times in one day can be, this next Marseilles story from late December is probably worse. Apparently a bus driver was attacked twice in the space of a few minutes, by two gangs of romanian immigrants. Loosely translated from the French regional newspaper La Provence, this tale of transit terrorism:

Bus driver stabbed in Northern neighborhood of Marseilles

In a flash, the knife blade was thrust into the victim’s armpit. Bent over in pain, the 34 year old bus driver crumpled to the floor of the vehicle. After the 9:30 am stabbing the two aggressors took flight on foot, leaving the passengers terrified. The bus had just stopped at the terminal of l’hopital Nord when two men came aboard, but refused to pay their fares.

When the driver asked them to pay, the two responded with insults, threats…and suddenly a knife blow seemingly aimed at the victim’s heart. Yet the suffering was only beginning for the driver. According to eye witness accounts collected by the police, the driver then underwent a second attack. “A few minutes later, just before the arrival of the police, about 30 individuals of Romanian origin arrived at the terminal, armed with iron bars”, said one investigator. The victim, writhing in pain on the ground, was attacked a second time. Taken to emergency services, the driver suffered two wounds, and is greatly traumatized.
Thanks to tips given by witnesses, the suspects were quickly spotted and arrested in the Romanian squat at the chemin du Vallons-des-Pins. One of the two has been formally identified by the victim as the assailant attacking with an iron bar. The alleged attacker is a 30-year old Romanian.

Upon news of the attack, Marseilles bus drivers sprung into action... by going on strike:

Drivers working out of the Arenc and la Rose depots decided to stop all bus
services into the northern Marseilles neighborhoods, in solidarity with their
fallen colleague.

One commentor, zebra3, laments: "By the time this is over there won't be any more busses there!!" Another commentor points to a similar incident in the city of Brest, where the stabbing of a bus driver resulted in all buses heading straight back to the depot. A more cynical commenter suggests not even bothering to collect fares anymore when traveling through "certain" regions.

Where will this all end? Just like the garbage collectors, utility workers and firefighters needing police escorts to operate in these "sensitive" areas, pretty soon bus drivers will demand equal protection. Who could blame them? Arguably even the police now need police escorts in order to properly do their jobs in these neighborhoods…

[The foreboding building in the photo is the notorious “Chateau d’If”, the Alcatraz-like offshore prison located near Marseilles, readily familiar to Alexandre Dumas fans for its role in the novel “Count of Monte Cristo”. Maybe it’s time to put it back to its old use..?]