The mayor of Béziers, Robert Ménard, has claimed that 80 percent of thuggish youths involved in recent urban violence in the French city are from immigrant backgrounds.
Speaking after police officers were ambushed with fireworks and an apartment block was torched in the Devèze district, Ménard pointed to what he called an “explosive cocktail” of drug trafficking, mass immigration, and judicial leniency fueling the unrest.
“These troublemakers are getting younger and younger: 15, 14, sometimes 13. And 80 percent of them are immigrants. Just look at the surnames,” the independent Ménard told Le Journal du Dimanche. He said drug dealing has become a primary source of income not only for individual dealers but often for entire families.
The latest wave of violence broke out on the night of Saturday, July 19, when police responding to a series of fires were lured into an ambush by around 50 masked and hooded individuals. The attackers launched fireworks at officers, set up barricades with flaming trash bins, and injured one officer, who suffered a second-degree burn.
At the same time, a nearby apartment was deliberately set on fire with residents inside. Six people were later relocated after their homes were destroyed.
Ménard, a long-time advocate of tougher policing and immigration controls, defended his security strategy, noting that municipal police numbers have risen from 34 to 130 under his tenure, and that they now work armed and year-round. He said the violence was in direct retaliation to recent arrests of young offenders.
“In recent weeks, the municipal and national police have arrested and imprisoned several young people. Their response: ‘You bother us, we’ll mess you up.’ In other words, if you want peace, leave us alone. But it doesn’t work like that,” he said.
Despite the increased policing, Ménard said the municipal force lacks key powers, such as the ability to check ID or access stolen vehicle records. “We can’t ask them to be on the frontlines without giving them the tools,” he said.
He also criticized what he sees as an overly lenient legal framework put in place by former Minister of National Education Nicole Belloubet. “When you’re sentenced to one or three months in prison, you have to serve them. Period,” Ménard said. “I can’t stand laws like Ms. Belloubet’s that allow for automatic sentence adjustments for sentences of less than a year. The result: Offenders know perfectly well they’ll never set foot in prison. It’s absurd.”
The mayor said he has raised the issue with both President Emmanuel Macron and Minister of Justice Gérald Darmanin, but has yet to see meaningful change.
“I asked [Macron]: ‘Where are we?’ He replied: ‘It’s in progress.’ But what does that mean, in progress? In my administration, when people tell me that, it’s because there’s no response. And that’s unbearable.”
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