In the wake of a shocking incident in Metz, France, where a 38-year-old woman was raped in a shopping mall's underground parking garage by an illegal Nigerian migrant, city officials are grappling with public safety and immigration issues. Mayor François Grosdidier has proposed new measures, including dedicated parking spaces for women and enhanced surveillance, as he seeks to address rising fears related to personal safety in urban environments. This incident has not only highlighted the immediate need for protective actions but also reignited discussions around immigration policies and their impact on crime rates in France and beyond.
RMX: After an illegal Nigerian migrant allegedly raped a 38-year-old woman in an underground parking garage of a shopping mall in the French city of Metz, the city’s mayor is being forced to take action, including the introduction of parking spaces reserved for women near exits, elevators and elevators across the entire city, along with more surveillance.
The incident happened in the Saint-Jacques shopping mall on Aug. 9, with the illegal Nigerian migrant suspect taken into custody by police. He was already known to police for other crimes. The woman was treated at the hospital for injuries, according to French publication Valuers Actuelles.
In response to the rape, the mayor of Metz, François Grosdidier, said that measures in parking garages were necessary. He said nothing about the immigration situation, which has led to skyrocketing sexual assaults across the West and France, but instead focused on the need for more surveillance and female-only parking spots.
“I went so far as to suggest that there be spaces reserved for women as close as possible to the entrances and exits. So that they do not have to, especially at late hours of the night, cross a car park, which cannot be completely secure since you can always hide between the cars,” he said.
The mayor is also calling for even more cameras in parking garages, including in “blind” spots.
“We are going to work with those responsible for private car parks, as we do in our own car parks, so that there are no video protection blind zones, so that the images that are recorded are also seen in real time, so that we can intervene,” said Grosdidier.
Although this is only one city and has to do with a very specific incident, the trends are clear. The solution to the mass immigration crisis has been consistently more surveillance across the West, including in relation to terrorism and crime. Notably, many of the Saudis who committed the 9/11 attacks were trained in U.S. flight schools, which helped fuel support for the passage of the U.S. Patriot Act, which ushered in an era of legal mass surveillance of the U.S. population.
In many cases, countries have to reorganize their entire legal systems to accommodate foreigners or adjust to the new violent realities present in Western societies. For example, in response to the recent knife attacks in Solingen — which saw a Syrian national stab three people to death at the Festival of Diversity and wound eight others — the government is pursuing a plan to severely restrict access to knives, which are already tightly regulated in Germany.