Christian Estrosi, Mayor of Nice, and Christophe Mirmand, Prefect of the Alpes-Maritimes, signed the new coordination agreement between the National Police and the Municipal Police on Monday for the period 2013-2016. This new agreement replaces the one in effect since July 2009.
Coordination agreements that allocate tasks between local and national security forces and organize their cooperation have been strengthened by the ministerial decree of January 2, 2012.
This new agreement is concluded for a duration of three years and may be expressly renewed.
This commitment allows for the coordination of the National and Municipal Police’s actions, particularly regarding intervention modalities, information exchange, and communication means.
The objective of this agreement is to conduct local actions, prevention, and protection in complementarity between the national and municipal police, thus supporting the STATE in its sovereign mission of fighting delinquency.
“As Mayor, I have always wished to best support the State’s engagement in this battle, especially in terms of prevention, as this is a major issue that local authorities must support,” Christian Estrosi stated, seizing the opportunity to give a flattering nod to “his” police officers.
In the same vein, the Prefect first clearly stated the objective of the national police and the gendarmerie: “We must advance in the safety of residents effectively but calmly and with a long-term perspective,” possibly recalling past controversies triggered by the Mayor of Nice directed at the Ministry of the Interior.
He continued: “The joint mobilization and the contribution of cameras (120 more cameras will be installed in 2013) in the detection and identification of offenders allowed us to observe an initial decrease of 1.62% in the number of offenses, even though we observe an increase in pickpocketing and vehicle thefts.”
Proximity, collaboration, trust: these are the key words of the security policy that must be applied without exploiting incidents and taking residents hostage for partisan debates.
The overall coherence of the security policy demands an increased sense of responsibility, avoiding the use of security measures solely for propaganda purposes.
