A 10-year-old girl and an 11-year-old boy were seriously injured while playing «tag» on the esplanade of their neighborhood after being knocked down Friday evening by a motorcycle during an urban rodeo in Pontoise (Val -d’Oise).

«I want to say that the government has an extremely firm hand against not these urban rodeos which are presented as a positive word, as if it were a spectacle, but against these often criminal acts which come to kill, which come to hurt very seriously women, children, we saw it again very recently in the Val-d’Oise», underlined the minister during a visit to Marseille.

«I asked the police and the national gendarmerie for this month of August to intensify these controls and I would like there to be 10,000 control operations from today throughout the national territory to fight against these criminal acts of people who take the road for their road», he added.

In an instruction sent Monday to the prefects and consulted by AFP, the Minister of the Interior requests that these checks target «the most exposed axes» according to «dates and time slots».

It also orders to «proceed to the systematic seizure of the machines used», «to optimize the use of video protection» and «to identify the places of storage» of motorcycles or quads, in connection with social landlords and municipal police. .

On June 8, a 19-year-old young man died after being hit by a motorcycle during an urban rodeo in Rennes.

The minister defended his policy of firmness by recalling «that for two months there have been 8,000 operations by the police and the gendarmerie» in France.

They resulted, according to him, in 1,200 arrests – «unheard of», according to him – and 700 seizures of motorcycles, quads or cars.

A 2018 law has strengthened the fight against these motorized «rodeos» and provides for penalties of up to five years in prison for their perpetrators.

Noting that «Parliament wishes to strengthen the legislative arsenal and be able to better condemn» the perpetrators, the minister underlined that he was «in favor of the aggravation of criminal means».