Swiss village bordering France subsidises alarms for burglary-prone residents

A Swiss village at the border with France will become the first to subsidise burglary alarms for all residents after a spike in break-ins, the mayor said in comments broadcast on Friday.

Published: 19 April 2019 16:48 CEST

Swiss village bordering France subsidises alarms for burglary-prone residents

Photo: Daniel Marconnet/Wikimedia

The small northwestern village of Boncourt, which counts just over 1,200 inhabitants, decided a few years ago to hire a security company to patrol the streets at night, and also requested that local and regional police as well as border guards patrol the area.

The mayor at the time, Andre Goffinet, said such measures were needed after a string of burglaries, including of the local bank and gas station, which he blamed on “the border effect”.

The village is located just one kilometre (0.6 miles) from the French border and 50 kilometres from Germany.

But current mayor Lionel Maitre said Friday the break-ins were continuing.

“We see that these measures (the patrols) are still not sufficient,” Maitre told the RTS public broadcaster.

He said local authorities had therefore decided the village would become the first municipality in Switzerland to subsidise the installation of home-security systems for its residents.

The village, which already spends around 25,000 Swiss francs ($25,000, 22,000 euros) annually on security patrols, plans to spend up to 30,000 more to cover part of the cost of installing the home-security systems.

Maitre told RTS the cost was reasonable compared to the benefit it would bring in terms of added security.

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The French Jewish community, the third largest in the world, has for months been on edge in the face of a growing number of attacks and desecrations of memorials.

“National police in Rouen neutralised early this morning an armed individual who clearly wanted to set fire to the city’s synagogue,” Interior Minister Gerald Darmanin wrote on X, formerly Twitter.

Police responded at 6.45 am to reports of “fire near the synagogue”, a police source said.

A source close to the case told AFP the man “was armed with a knife and an iron bar, he approached police, who fired. The individual died”.

“It is not only the Jewish community that is affected. It is the entire city of Rouen that is bruised and in shock,” Rouen Mayor Nicolas Mayer-Rossignol wrote on X.

He made clear there were no other victims other than the attacker.

Two separate investigations have been opened, one into the fire at the synagogue and another into the circumstances of the death of the individual killed by the police, Rouen prosecutors said.

Such an investigation by France’s police inspectorate general is automatic whenever an individual is killed by the police.

The man threatened a police officer with a knife and the latter used his service weapon, said the Rouen prosecutor.

The dead man was not immediately identified, a police source said.

Asked by AFP, the National Anti-Terrorism Prosecutor’s Office said that it is currently assessing whether it will take up the case.

France has the largest Jewish community of any country after Israel and the United States, as well as Europe’s largest Muslim community.

There have been tensions in France in the wake of the October 7th attack by Palestinian militant group Hamas on Israel, followed by the Israeli bombardment of the Gaza Strip.

Red hand graffiti was painted onto France’s Holocaust Memorial earlier this week, prompted anger including from President Emmanuel Macron who condemned “odious anti-Semitism”.

“Attempting to burn a synagogue is an attempt to intimidate all Jews. Once again, there is an attempt to impose a climate of terror on the Jews of our country. Combating anti-Semitism means defending the Republic,” Yonathan Arfi, the president of the Representative Council of Jewish Institutions of France (CRIF). wrote on X.

France was hit from 2015 by a spate of Islamist attacks that also hit Jewish targets. There have been isolated attacks in recent months and France’s security alert remains at its highest level.