REPORT. Motorcycles, drones, and sanctions against parents... Faced with urban rodeos, these Oise towns are trying to outpace delinquents.

Faced with this phenomenon, which has become a nightmare for some local elected officials, some municipalities have decided to tackle the problem head on, such as Compiègne, which has become a laboratory for the fight against these wild rodeos.

Goodbye to the small utility vehicle or the usual van of the municipal police: here, rodeos are being tracked with motorcycles. How can we limit or even stop urban rodeos ? Like many municipalities faced with this phenomenon, the city of Compiègne, in the Oise region, has decided to take this problem seriously. Teams of the municipal police are on the lookout for these motocross bikes that pollute the daily lives of residents . To this end, the town hall has equipped itself with suitable equipment to compete with these two-wheelers: motorcycles.

Thanks to them, the municipal police patrol everywhere in the squares, parking lots, and alleys of a sensitive neighborhood. The area is calm today. This is explained, according to Chief Brigadier Viguet-Carrin, by the fact that the wild rodeo enthusiasts keep a low profile when the municipal police motorcyclists are out: "When they see the motorcycles, there's much less contact and much less provocation than when we're in a car. They know that we'll be able to follow them more easily and more easily spot where they are." In this game of "cat and mouse" described by the Chief Brigadier, the municipal police officers are prohibited by law from engaging in a chase. They can, however, follow the motocross or quad bikes to get back to their storage location.

Obtaining information, "tracking the trail"... This is the crux of the matter in this fight against wild rodeos. With this in mind, the town hall of Compiègne has launched a system that works very well: a simple, special "stop rodeo" email address. Brigadier-Chief Viguet-Carrin explains how it works: "It's an email box where anonymity is preserved. People contact us and give us information on storage locations. It will also be, for example, during a time slot when urban rodeos tend to occur."

When vehicles are seized, they most often end up in the scrapyard. And the town hall intends to make this known to as many people as possible, as demonstrated by a video posted on social media by the mayor of Compiègne a year ago, in which he expressed his satisfaction with the information received via this email address. Created five years earlier, it led to the seizure of around fifty motorcycles and quads.

Philippe Marini, the LR mayor of Compiègne, acknowledges that the measures he has taken are working, but "the results are not sufficient, they could be better." So, to move up a gear, he would like to equip his municipal police with paintballs in order to mark the perpetrators of urban rodeos with indelible paint, with a view to subsequently arresting them.

Recently, he also equipped his municipal police with drones that will have to wait before they can be used. This is enough to make the elected official grumble as time is running out and some residents are becoming increasingly concerned before the warmer weather: "We can't use them! Which I find absolutely not normal. This is Kafka! The Constitutional Council itself, the wise men of Rue Montpensier, have made a decision that excludes the use of drones by municipal police forces. And I say: Mr. Minister, trust the municipal police forces."

"I've been saying this to Mr. Retailleau's office and to the minister himself for several months. Unfortunately, I don't see anything coming and I'm starting to get very impatient."

Philippe Marini, Mayor of Compiègne

to franceinfo

About thirty kilometers from Compiègne, still in the Oise region, another mayor is mobilizing against wild rodeos and proposing a radical measure. In Pont-Sainte-Maxence, several minors were implicated a few weeks ago in an urban rodeo in front of a school. Mayor Arnaud Dumontier recounts: "Therefore, as I am also president of the OPAC de l'Oise (Office d'Habitations à Bon Marché), which is the leading landlord in the former Picardy region with 30,000 homes, I asked my department, if there was a court conviction—which is a necessary prerequisite—to initiate exclusion proceedings against the parents."

Evictions from social housing and systematic filing of complaints in the event of urban rodeos. A measure, the mayor tells us, widely supported by his constituents.