Police patrol the streets in search of curfew-breaking pre-teens in Riviera tourist haven

As the clock struck 11pm on Thursday night, armed police in bullet-proof vests set off on foot patrol around Nice’s centre.

Their goal? To find any pre-teens breaking a new nighttime curfew and potentially causing havoc after dark.

With its palm-fringed Promenade des Anglais, year-round sunshine and pretty Italianate architecture, Nice is better known for its moneyed tourists and pensioners than hordes of unruly children.

But the Riviera city has become the latest, and the most high-profile,  place in France to impose a curfew on under-13s amid rising public concern over youth violence following a spate of sometimes deadly assaults involving minors.

Nice’s decision came days after the mayor of Béziers in south-west France issued a near-identical decree. Other towns and cities are taking or considering similar measures.

As a media scrum struggled to keep up with the police’s march through Nice’s central Trachel Gare du Sud district, the city’s Right-wing mayor Christian Estrosi – who had joined the patrol – turned to The Telegraph.

“It’s not a mayor’s role to play the parent,” he said, acknowledging that the French approach to youth violence was perhaps more interventionist than in the UK, which is grappling with similar problems.

“But if parents abandon their kids and leave them outside at night, should we abandon our population? There’s a lot of talk of authority. Less talk, more action.”

Two days of rain had left Nice’s streets unusually empty, but with the long summer ahead, the mayor is taking no chances in warding off potential trouble.

France has been hit by a number of violent incidents involving young people, some of them fatal, in recent weeks.

Yesterday, a remembrance march took place in Chateauroux in central France, where a 16-year-old called Matisse was stabbed to death, and a 15-year-old Afghan boy has been arrested. Matisse’s father has warned against politicising his death.

Two teenagers were charged with beating a 22-year-old man to death last month in Grande-Synthe, a suburb of the northern city of Dunkirk.

A month ago, a 15-year-old boy died after being savagely beaten by youths on his way home from school in Viry-Châtillon, a Paris suburb.

A 13-year-old girl was left in a coma after being beaten up by fellow pupils in the southern city of Montpellier the same week. Her mother claims she was targeted for not wearing a Muslim headscarf.

Several other French cities have introduced temporary curfews for children during periods of unrest, such as rioting across the country last summer after police shot dead a 17-year-old of north African origin.

Emmanuel Macron’s centrist government has recently toughened its stance on youth violence as it faces being trounced by Marine Le Pen’s Right-wing nationalist party, National Rally, in European parliament elections in June.

Mr Estrosi is known for his tough law and order stance. Nice has France’s highest number of municipal police per capita and the highest number of surveillance cameras, around 5,000.

All the same, it grapples with crime like everywhere else. On Tuesday, CCTV captured two men stabbing a 30-year -old Libyan tourist on the Promenade des Anglais after dark.

The mayor has already imposed periodic curfews between 6pm to 11pm for the under-13s between 2009 and 2019 and these worked, he claimed.

Mr Estrosi said it was time to bring them back as in the past 15 months, the city had detained 1,230 minors and handed them to the judicial police.

Repeat curfew-breakers’ parents face €38 fines, losing financial aid, and being obliged to take a parenting course. Failure to respond could result in legal action for abandoning parental duties.

In Vieux Nice, where the flower market and maze of narrow streets are a major pull for tourists, some locals were perplexed that the area was on the list.

“Around here we don’t see under-13s out at night,” said Laurence Teuma, 46, a waitress at La Cambuse, a restaurant along the Cours Saleya, a stone’s throw from the flower market.

However, it is a very different story 15 minutes’ drive from the city centre in the Les Moulins district.

Notorious for its drug dealing, the dilapidated housing project has seen a spate of turf wars in which rival gangs engage in brawls and gunfights. On March 26, footage circulating on social media showed a running battle in which an individual was beaten with an iron bar as shots were fired.

Les Moulins is the only area in Nice where the curfew has been extended to all under-16s, notably because “52 per cent of drug dealers in the district are minors”. “These minors are often recruited by adults as lookouts or vendors,” the order went on.

As this Telegraph correspondent walked around, two young teenage boys – apparently dealer scouts – aggressively accused me of being an undercover police officer. My English accent was extra cover, they claimed.

Most residents of the area approved of the principle, even if they suggested it would be hard to enforce.

Visiting her mother, Nathalie Gomes, 18, said: “I never go out at night. You risk gun battles between rival drug dealers. I think it’s a good idea that other teenagers stay indoors, but I think it’s impossible to prevent 15- or 16-year-olds.”

Aquilino Tavares Rodrigues, a Portuguese construction worker and father of three, said: “I see lots of young kids out at night. For the (dealer) bosses it’s good because kids can do a lot and the police can’t do much against the under-18s.

“So I’m for a curfew. My oldest son is 16 and luckily is an excellent footballer who goes to school outside this area, in town, then he comes straight home.

“Those who stay out risk falling under bad influence. Dealers offer them €20, €50, it’s nothing to them, then it’s too late.”

Mr Rodrigues, who moved to Les Moulins four years ago and “wants to leave”, added: “I can’t see the police being able to enforce it [the curfew]. We don’t see them much in Les Moulins.

“Everyone needs money around here. There are lots of foreigners and they’re prepared to do anything to get to feed mouths.”

‘They’ve left the outer suburbs to rot’

Kamal, an Uber driver, said: “I’m for a curfew. I work nights and can tell you every day I see young kids aged 12 or 13, out up to three or four in the morning in sensitive areas, like Les Moulins, Bon Voyage, L’Ariane estates. They smoke shisha and listen to loud music.

“They’ve cleaned up the city centre, no doubt about that but they’ve left the outer suburbs to rot.”

Juliette Chesnel, an opposition Green councillor, said the mayor would “do better to look after his young people” instead of cracking down on them.

“Yes there’s a drug problem in the Moulins district but we need to give these kids a chance to play,” she said. “And yet, in the town’s budget, there has been a reduction in funding for the upkeep of sports facilities and leisure centres.”

With 67 per cent of the French in favour of youth curfews in trouble spots, according to a recent CSA poll, the curfew idea is gaining acceptance across the political spectrum.

The Macron government introduced an 8pm-5am curfew for under-18s in France’s Caribbean territory of Guadeloupe last month. Local authorities say minors make up about 38 per cent of those breaking the law.

Gabriel Attal, the prime minister, suggested placing young offenders awaiting sentences “in a specialised establishment, which is similar to a curfew” and came to Nice last month to announce a plan to place “adrift” youths in boarding schools to keep them away from “bad company”.

Youth violence became a pressing topic last summer after it emerged that many rioters who torched cars and smashed up shops, schools and town halls were under 18 – some as young as 11.

Hugues Moutou, a regional state prefect, made waves afterwards by declaring: “If these kids are brought up to be wildflowers, don’t be surprised if, at the age of 12, they’re throwing stones at the police. The best method is two slaps in the face and off to bed!”

Right say law and order has collapsed under Macron

The populist Right has seized on the issue, with National Rally’s European election candidate Jordan Bardella claiming that law and order had collapsed in France under the Macron presidency.

“There is no longer a single place in our country where the French are safe from violence and insecurity,” he said during a debate on Thursday night with pro-Macron candidate Valérie Hayer. She accused him of “systematically exploiting tragedies for political gain” and “helping to divide our country”.

But further down the coast in Marseille, where a record 47 murders were committed last year, prosecutors warn that teenagers are increasingly involved in drug battles involving assault rifles and handguns.

While Mr Estrosi’s municipal police are on board with his plan, they require help from the national police, under interior ministry control. Mr Estrosi said he was convinced the government would back his curfew plan.

However, Laurent Alcaraz of the Alliance police union for the Alpes-Maritimes, was more guarded. “It could help,” he said, but the police risk “replacing social services or holiday camps”.

“There are two types of minors – French and foreign. It’s easy to get French kids’ identity and phone the parents to pick them up at the police station. But for unaccompanied illegal immigrants, it’s far more complex as it requires working out their age and nationality, and potentially putting them into social care.

“Often they are taken to so-called ‘open centres’ which they can leave at will and start again.”

Experts doubt efficacy of curfews

Eric Henry, a national union delegate, told The Telegraph: “We are already stretched thin and have to prioritise. We’re in favour but these are temporary, one-off measures that won’t solve the problem.”

He called for a debate on “making parents who abandon their children criminally liable” and on renouncing the current French “minority excuse” rule whereby 16 to 18-year-olds convicted of crimes receive sentences half as heavy as adults.

Critics argue the debate on youth violence is overblown as official figures suggest under-13s made up only 2 per cent of people accused of violence against someone last year, and just 1 per cent of those investigated over violent thefts.

As for the efficacy of curfews, Véronique Le Goaziou, a sociologist, said there was no evidence they worked.

“Contrary to popular belief, the majority of acts of juvenile delinquency or violence are not committed in the evening or at night but in broad daylight, in and around schools, on transport routes, in shopping centres and where young people live,” she told Libération.

“Perhaps there is a will to act, but proposing such a measure is clearly just a publicity stunt.”