How Grenoble Became One of the Most Dangerous Places in France

Earlier this year, Grenoble was dubbed “France’s Silicon Valley” and named one of the country’s most desirable cities to live in. It embodied Emmanuel Macron’s “start-up nation,” the dynamic vision he sold to the French when he was elected president in 2017.

Millennial techies and green engineers flocked to the city in the French Alps. As one energy executive boasted, “It’s true that being close to the mountains and nature can be a recruiting advantage.”

Grenoble recently featured on another list: the ten most dangerous places to live in France, based on crime data from the Directorate-General for Internal Security. It was ranked sixth, though it may soon climb again after a summer of bloodshed.

On Sunday, a municipal cleaner witnessed a traffic accident and approached the two vehicles to offer his help. The driver of one vehicle pulled out a firearm and shot dead 49-year-old Lilian Dejean, a father of two originally from Guadeloupe. “He wanted to help people in need,” said his cousin Fabrice. “He was trying to do his duty as a patriot, he is a little hero.”

The man who fired the shots is still at large, but police have identified a suspect: Abdoul D. He has been convicted of theft, violence and drug trafficking.

The alleged killer’s profile is no surprise. Drug trafficking is rife in Grenoble, and has been for decades due to its proximity to Marseille – the centre of France’s drug industry – and the Italian border.

This year, violence has increased dramatically, with 19 shootings in Grenoble as rival cartels battle it out for control of the lucrative market, a war that is being repeated in towns and villages across France.

After Lilian Dejean’s death, his nephew told reporters: ‘It feels like Soweto (in South Africa) in France now. People are losing their lives in France. It’s crazy, it’s become a reality.’

I have been writing about the growing lawlessness in France for several years on Coffee House, and occasionally correspondents say I exaggerate. I resist. I simply report the facts about the violence, which many do not want to hear or see with their own eyes.

This is because they live in the healthy districts of Paris, Grenoble, Lyon or Marseille. Very rarely does chaos invade their well-ordered and prosperous lives. For this fortunate caste, life is truly like Emily in Paristhe absurdly opulent Netflix show that will soon feature Brigitte Macron as a guest star.

“Paris is increasingly lawless – but the middle class doesn’t seem to care,” was the headline of an article I wrote in March 2020. I was citing the alarming rise in most types of crime under the Socialist mayor, Anne Hidalgo, from theft to assault to sexual harassment on public transport. The latter crime is now so widespread that this year the first “safe space” opened on the metro for anxious passengers. You won’t see that in Emily in Paris.

Bourgeois Parisians still seem indifferent to the lawlessness of their city. Many of them voted in the recent parliamentary elections for the left-wing coalition of Jean-Luc Melenchon, which is either suspicious of the police or, on the extremes, downright hostile.

When a gendarme was fatally hit by a drunk driver with a string of convictions two weeks ago, there was barely a word of sympathy from the left for his distraught widow, who accused France of killing her husband through his negligence.

It is perhaps no surprise that of the ten most dangerous cities in France, all but nine are governed by the left. The exception is Aubervilliers, in ninth place, which is controlled by the centre-right.

The three most dangerous places – Lille, Saint Denis and Marseille – are controlled by the Socialist Party, as is Paris (seventh), while Bordeaux, Lyon and Grenoble (fourth, fifth and sixth) have Green Party mayors.

Grenoble’s mayor is Eric Piolle, a self-described “radical” who said in a 2020 interview that his ambition was to “bring spirituality back into politics.” He is fiercely opposed to nuclear power and supports regularizing all of France’s estimated one million illegal immigrants and allowing the wearing of the Islamic burkini in the city’s swimming pools.

Faced with the wave of violence that has hit Grenoble in the past year or so, Piolle has overstepped his bounds. When he was first elected in 2014, Piolle reversed a decision by his predecessor to arm the city’s police, and he also voiced his opposition to more surveillance cameras. “I don’t understand the mayor’s plan,” said one police officer. “I have the impression that the department has been abandoned. It’s as if he’s no longer interested in security.”

The apparent indifference of some mayors to the safety of their citizens is ideological. The police are the bad guys, those who “shoot to kill,” in the words of Jean-Luc Melenchon.

The people who actually shoot to kill work for the drug cartels. Often their victims come from ethnic minorities in France: like 10-year-old Fayed, who was killed in a crossfire in the city of Nîmes in 2023, or Socayna, a student, who was fatally hit by a stray bullet in Marseille as she studied in her bedroom.

Of course, there are arrondissements in Marseille that are perfectly safe, such as Grenoble, Lille and Paris. These are the areas where the politicians and the privileged live.

In other parts of the city, France increasingly resembles Soweto.