At the end of 2017, the 350 video surveillance cameras of the Toulouse system will be installed. But for the moment the figures for street crime remain stable.

With 229 cameras installed in the streets out of a total of 350 scheduled for the end of 2017, two thirds of the video surveillance program for the city of Toulouse has already been completed. But to take stock of the effectiveness of the device, it will be necessary to wait. “It will only be in the last two years of the mandate (2019-2020), that the effects will be felt on the public highway”, specifies cautious Olivier Arsac. In the meantime, the assistant in charge of security at the Capitol is patient by measuring the induced effects of the device that he almost carried on the baptismal font. And the first certainty is that the video cameras financed by the city were immediately adopted by the national police. Since the first six cameras were installed at Arnaud Bernard in the summer of 2014, video image requisitions in the context of police investigations have increased from 73 to 385. For investigators, video surveillance has become an effective investigative tool when t is about following a delinquent from street to street as he passes in front of the cameras.

In return, the collaboration between municipal and national police has never been so close. In 2016, the city's Video PC contacted the police 2,257 times after spotting suspicious behavior on public roads. 296 reports of the sale of narcotics, 205 street vendors, 150 brawls, 142 taggers or unscrupulous passers-by surprised by the objective in the middle of a mix on a corner of the sidewalk, and 447 more or less suspicious groups of homeless people were reported to the PC of the Boulevard de l'Embouchure. “We report, then the national police intervenes if it deems it necessary or if it has the necessary means to do so. It is not a miraculous tool, but it makes it possible to intensify the operations on the spot”, specifies Olivier Arsac who announces by way of example an average of two assaults of a sexual nature filmed each month in the streets, or the discovery in December 2016 of a young 13-year-old runaway found in the middle of the night on rue Alsace.

But, beyond crime on the public highway, the 35 operators installed in the new PC of Saint Cyprien are also witnesses in real time of the glitches of health or the blows of madness of the Toulouse residents. In January 2016, a man who suffered a heart attack in the Victor Hugo sector was quickly taken care of after being reported by the video operators. In May one, a desperate man threw himself off the Pont Neuf in front of the cameras. The hour of reckoning has not yet come. But for Olivier Arsac the essential is achieved: "with six cameras for 10,000 inhabitants Toulouse now has the same rate of equipment as Montpellier or Lyon."

Soon “Video PV”

From February, motorists who park in a pedestrian zone or a “shared space” in the city center located in front of the lens of a camera will be verbalized directly from the video PC of the Saint-Cyprien district by a sworn operator. Technically, this one will notice the offense for the first time and then wait for it to be characterized, before pressing the button which will trigger the drafting and send it the PV. He will wait the statutory time of three minutes to verbalize the owner of a vehicle parked in a pedestrian area, and 20 minutes for parking in a delivery area. This invisible device will only be set up inside the boulevards that define the historic heart of Toulouse.

In the context of image rights, the law provides that anyone filmed without their knowledge by a video surveillance camera can consult their image on simple written request to the mayor of the city. But the deadlines are strict. Because the consultation can only take place in the period of one month during which the videos are kept. The person who wishes to consult these images will only be authorized to do so if they appear alone on the document.