The time has come for police retirement for Commissioner Robert Saby in Sète

Le commissaire Robert Saby patron de la police sétoise pendant 7 ans. H.A.

Le commissaire divisionnaire a passé sept ans à la tête du commissariat de de Sète-Frontignan. Il revient sur cette période marquée par la lutte contre les réseaux liés au narcotrafic. 

After seven years at the head of the Sète-Frontignan police district, Divisional Commissioner Robert Saby has just retired from the police, having reached the age limit of 67. Pushing one or two more years would not have bothered him. And yet, nothing predestined this Toulousain, passionate since his beginnings by the work of the judicial police, to end his career as a civil servant at the head of a police station of a small district (70,000 inhabitants). Indeed, after a few years in public security in Montauban, the one who started as an administrative agent before taking the competition to become a commissioner, quickly joined the PJ. Toulouse, Bordeaux, Marseille, Corsica, then he will lead the racing and gaming brigade in Paris. The Jacques Viguier cases in Toulouse, from the Wagram circle (linked to the Brise de mer mafiosi), mark his career as a bloodhound.

When he arrived in Sète in 2018, he declared: “I like to attack where I'm not expected […] I bring another culture. I love to shake things up, break the codes.” A method that he has worked to implement in particular to deal with the evolution of delinquency and in particular drug trafficking. “In seven years, we have seen a rise in everyday violence, domestic violence and the arrival of criminal organisations in the field of drug trafficking throughout the country,” indicates the head of the Sète police. “The mission in Sète-Frontignan consisted of reconciling the work of public security, police visibility and proximity to the population with the need to tackle new organizations that disrupt the lives of residents in different neighborhoods such as the island of Thau but also the city center.”

He sets up a group against “violence related to trafficking”

At the local level, with his investigative know-how, he led what some would call a small revolution, by creating a group “drugs” at the local level, specialized in “violence related to trafficking”. With success, believes the commissioner who also brought his know-how in legal proceedings: “This group took charge of this phenomenon with a lot of work and commitment and was rewarded with results. Several teams of traffickers formed were neutralized (and tried before the Montpellier judicial court, Editor's note). The best response is the one given to us by the population”, indicates the divisional officer, convinced that the complementarity between work in uniform and in plain clothes, with the municipal police of Sète and Frontignan, as close as possible to the population pays off.

In terms of public security, Robert Saby's years in Sète were marked by the yellow vest movement and the regular occupations of the Frontignan fuel depot, a strategic point of the departmental protest. As he leaves his police duties, Robert Saby does not intend to stop his professional life there. His experience could well interest more than one.

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