In Marseille, the army would be even more helpless than the police in the face of urban violence

The Army should send it, but to renovate... What a shame in 2012... And it must be the same everywhere in the cities of our territory, out of sight, out of mind... I put you some other pictures of virgin HLM of Felix Pya who (I believe) is part of the "Phocéenne city", admit that it makes you want... And then you wonder why they feel abandoned and have so much hatred of society... The republic is are rights and duties, but to ask people to do their duty as citizens, we should already respect their rights...

Atlantico: The PS senator from Marseille Samia Ghali calls for the intervention of the army in response to the violence which has already claimed the lives of 19 people in the Marseille city. In what legal and technical framework could the military intervene in the most sensitive areas of France?

Serge Supersac: Legally, such intervention is provided for by the Constitution in a number of emergency and exceptional situations. We are talking about insurrectionary riots like in 1947 or civil war. Elements a little bit more serious than what we are talking about today.

In recent years, we have been talking about a militarization of the police, through its means and methods. The idea has entered people's minds that this police has a resolutely offensive role. So much so that there is obviously a confusion that has set in: one has the impression that the success of his mission depends solely on this type of response. So, if the means of the police do not allow it to succeed in this area, why not consider the next stage? The soldiers, their combat planes or even, as a gendarmerie officer had suggested to me one day, the armored vehicles available to them for deployment in cities.

All of this makes no sense. Stéphane Gatignon – the mayor of Sevran – had mentioned in the form of a joke the use of blue helmets. A provocation aimed at drawing attention to his own problem. It seems that in the mind of Samia Ghali, it's much more confusing: it would be enough to put the bad guys in prison and bring out the army to solve all the problems.

We have to be careful what we talk about. The army works in a simple way: we give it a mission and we give it the means to fulfill it. We are talking here about a use of force that can quickly fall into the use of weapons. If the threat persists, we kill it. It has nothing to do with a mission to restore civil peace. If a state of emergency is instituted and military roadblocks are set up, we must be prepared to welcome the announcement of around thirty deaths in the early morning. Would public opinion accept it?

In Marseille, we do not have a situation of urban violence comparable to the riots of 2005. This is about settling scores between dealers. The cannabis market is saturated and since they can't settle this in the commercial court… they settle this with heavy guns.

To deal with this situation, would the army possibly have means that the police do not have?

The police use helicopters. An extremely expensive method. At the same time, we are beginning to develop, still very discreetly, the use of drones. Inexpensive and perfectly silent, the drone could carry out the same mission at a lower cost. These inconsistencies lead me to wonder about what our strategists and our decision-makers are doing: we need a real reflection on the means implemented.

Does the army have other tools? Not much. We give them the means according to the objectives that we set for them. A few years ago, an event occurred in Saint-Dizier, about which little was said. Without being Chicago, this city has a problematic neighborhood, like many others in France. One evening like the others, everything exploded in this sensitive area. For two hours, the city was in the hands of about fifty individuals, without the authorities managing to intervene. But a small particularity, Saint-Dizier hosts the largest Air Force base in France. This clearly shows that the military are no better able than the police to respond to such situations. Unless you fire two missiles at the neighborhood...but that doesn't make sense.