There were up to 700 gendarmes deployed on Saint-Martin after the passage of Irma.

200 were stationed locally within the brigade and the first reinforcements arrived on Thursday September 7 to bring the workforce to 300 then to 400 on Saturday, and so on. Today, as of October 13, 577 are still there. Some two hundred should leave within a month, the others will remain "as long as it takes" to ensure maximum security when more businesses are reopened, says Lt. Col. Sébastien Manzoni.

Asked Friday morning at a press conference on the feeling of insecurity that the population may have felt, the lieutenant-colonel is adamant: "Security was restored as of Thursday evening." The first arrests of looters took place the following weekend. To date, more than 150 people have been implicated and more than 200 searches have been conducted in the French part and have led to the seizure of around 200 cubic meters of material.

"In the hours which followed Irma's passage, our mission was to bring aid to the population," he explains. “The gendarmes provided first aid. Some have brought wounded from Quartier to Hope Estate, certainly passing in front of looters, ”explains Sébastien Manzoni. "But I understand this critical feeling that people may have had," he says. And to repeat it: "our mission was to bring aid to people and clear the traffic lanes".

Should reinforcements have been sent upstream? Sébastien Manzoni accepts the debate, the reflection that must be carried out to draw the best lessons from the passage from Irma to Saint-Martin.

Source: www.soualigapost.com

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