French police have detained 12 suspects after 145 people reported being pricked with syringes during the country’s annual street music festival, officials said Sunday.
Millions of people took to the streets across France on Saturday evening for the Fete de la Musique, with authorities reporting “unprecedented crowds” in Paris.
Before the party, posts on social media had called for women to be targeted during the festivities.
Oh cool. We’re doing another needle panic
Britian went through this just three years earlier.
Their experiences were shared on social media, along with photographs of apparent puncture wounds. Groups were formed to warn of the dangers of needle spiking, politicians called for investigations, and by February 2022, over 1,300 reports of needle spiking had been made to police over the previous 6 months (Wynn-Davies, 2022).
…
Many victims claimed they only had a few drinks and were not drunk. However, an Australian study of suspected incidents of drink spiking found that self-reports of alcohol consumption are often unreliable. One 17-year-old girl was taken to hospital after having only one glass of vodka. However, on further questioning, she ‘remembered’ having beer and whisky. The study also analyzed the blood and urine of patients who presented at hospital emergency departments. Of 97 patients, none had traces of a sedative in their systems (Quigley et al., 2009).
Jfc what the fuck
Aside from the pricking scandal, what a fantastic idea.
On “Fête de la Musique” people are urged to play music outside.
Here my country is stuck with Christian holidays that noone remembers the meaning of.
It’s a GREAT festival. Super fun. Every neighborhood you can just walk around and there are little stages of groups or solo musicians performing. Free and just kind of everywhere. Good vibes. Very pedestrian friendly.
We also have those Christian holidays in France, and fête de la musique is just one evening, not a holiday. But it is on the longest daylight day of the year, so that’s nice.
Tangentially, I was chatting with the owner of my local pub in Boston recently, and apparently it’s become something of a game (?!?!?!?!?) to try to slip people mickeys around here. As in, just see if you can sneak it into the drink, with no real intent of abuse or rape or whatever - just to see if you can do it.
I fucking hate humans sometimes.
People are giving out free drugs to anyone? Oh no! Kudos to this brave person for speaking out with no regard for what that might do to their own business.
What’s a mickey?
Date rape drugs.
It’s much darker than what I thought. For me a mickey is a booger.
A penis.
Is that what they say once they get caught, or do they tell that story just in case they get caught in the future?
No idea. If I caught someone doing it, I wouldn’t talk to them about what their rationale was. I’d throw my beer at them and then yell for the bouncer that some guy was trying to slip shit into drinks.
There are many more dumb assholes than rapists. I believe people who do this just for fun, not for rape, do exist. It’s quite terrible anyway.
I mean i could see this actually being a good stunt to raise awareness about it. Like use something fake and safe like a time release tablet that makes the drink fizz up suddenly 30 seconds later, or causes the whole thing to turn colour rapidly or something. But i doubt thats whats happening. Might make for a funny party theme with a close group of friends who are all in on it and targeting each other though.
Doesn’t matter how ineffective it might seem, that drink is getting thrown away
Nah, plenty of SA happening in Boston bars, and has been for like 10 years now in this recent “wave” where incidents have been increasing.
Motherfuckers just never knew how to have a good time.
Tangentially, I was chatting with the owner of my local pub in Boston recently, and apparently it’s become something of a game (?!?!?!?!?) to try to slip people mickeys around here.
In some time periods in some places in the world, getting a hand cut off was punishment for theft. While that is a bit extreme, maybe assholes convicted of this should lose the final knuckle of their pinky finger as punishment for drugging people at bars.
There is a reason civilized countries don’t do punishments like this any more - they don’t work.
And you are never ever 100% certain they did it, even with eye witnesses.
So cutting fingers of innocent people is also a nono
It should be something easy to see. Part of the advantage of cutting off someone’s hand isn’t just the punishment, it’s a marker that a person is a thief that they can’t get rid of. Ideally it’d be something obvious and easy to see, that’s also uncommon enough naturally that you know what happened.
Fuck, this was happening when my younger sister was going to bars. It wasn’t a thing I was aware of when I was younger. But I remember my sister saying 15 years ago that people were slipping drugs into drinks for this same reason. It was just to fuck with people
called for women to be targeted during the festivities
Do we know more? Was this supposed to just scare them or did they actually get injected with something?
Super frustrating article to read.
Fucking tell me about it 😂
Consent to cookies OR ELSE
Officials did not say if these were cases of so-called needle spiking with date-rape drugs such as Rohypnol or GHB
Some victims were taken to hospital for toxicological tests
investigations were opened after three people… reported feeling unwell.
after three people… reported feeling unwell.
Well that’s fair enough at any rate. So maybe at least this didn’t get anyone seriously injured.
Article said cops were injured but didn’t give details.
Cops love to dramatize exposure to any kind of drug. Case in point, a series of hoax claims about police nearly dying from mere proximity to fentanyl.
10-15 years ago it was definitely a thing. I remember posts about it on reddit, back when reddit was good. Eventually after it blew up a lot of bars started doing the angel drinks or messages in the bathroom. Bunch of women were targeted
Yep. In the 2000s, my town had a serious scare. I lived in a small town at the time near a major music fest, and the town handed out flyers about watching yourself because we had a bunch of roofie incidents.
One festival mocked our town for it and called us assholes/cops. Because that festival were like pro date-rape or some shit? Festival doesn’t exist anymore.
But I’ll never forget how many naive tourist girls who would get the flyer, laugh, and go, “Why would anyone do this haha!” And don’t take this stuff seriously.
I feel like social media has been a huge help at identifying shit behavior.
This is a panic that has come and gone multiple times even just during my lifetime. I remember the first time I heard about it was visitors to neighboring Tijuana with HIV infected blood on the 80s. Never once has it actually been confirmed to have happened.
These are 145 self reports. Nothing confirmed. No video evidence.
Wait, are you trying to tell us that this is not true because there is no video evidence? Just hundreds of women being in panic? Wtf
I’m saying that in the past every incidence or this has been alleged turned out to be mass panic. And at today’s age of constant video surveillance there would be evidence, not just reports. So either this is the very first case in the world where this is actually true and we will find that out through the evidence or we’re going to find out that it’s not true and then it matches all the previous events. But police reports do not make something real.
I’m asking people to look at the evidence.
145 women speaking up is evidence of this happening
145 people that think something happened isn’t evidence. Every case in the past had lots of people absolutely convinced it happened.
So let’s take this to the next step. There is video surveillance because every venue does these days. They pull the video. They watch the video. They follow the movements of every person. They see who bumped into who. If the video shows one or more people ranging too far to too many people and getting close when there is plenty of space and shows them dumping the evidence then we have actual proof that backs up the claims. Toxicology tests were performed. We find that there is something in the blood that shouldn’t be there.
You and each of the others here that are absolutely convinced that this time is the one time in history that this actually happened get vindicated.
But what if the video doesn’t show it? What if the toxicology is completely normal? Are you going to regret being so absolutely sure? Are you going to come back here and say “okay, I was wrong.”
I’m asking that you wait until the evidence is evaluated to make a decision. Reports aren’t proof. Evidence is proof. And given the history of this type of claim a little proof before judgment is absolutely warranted.
This also happened in France in 2022. People were detained, preliminary charges filed. And then the cases vanished. Not great reports of convictions. No “there is nothing to worry about, the criminals have he brought to justice.”
In this current case they have arrested maybe a dozen. If they are guilty then throw the book at them. But the guilty should come only after the evidence has been evaluated. And a report is not evidence. That’s suspicion.
Generally evidence is needed to arrest someone.
I hope France has a better track record than America for that.
You did not say we should wait for evidence, you just said it’s a panic and there is no evidence.
I said that every case in the past has been a panic. And until we find evidence this isn’t the Bayesian policies apply. Investigate and then figure out if something actually happened.
Maybe trust the victims first and if there is evidence against it doubt?
“Absence of evidence is not the evidence of absence”
~ Donald Rumsfeld
This is a real phenomenon, first widely reported in 2022. Due to some reason, it has resurged.
Arrests in France after scores report being attacked with syringes at street music festival
Millions of people took to the streets across France on Saturday evening for the Fête de la Musique, with authorities reporting “unprecedented crowds” in Paris. The feminist influencer Abrège Soeur warned online before the festival that calls had been made on social media for women to be targeted with syringes. It was not certain where such posts would have been made or by whom.
The interior ministry said 145 victims across the country had reported being stabbed with needles during outdoor music events across the country. Paris police reported 13 cases in the capital. Officials did not say if these were cases of so-called needle spiking with date-rape drugs such as Rohypnol or GHB, used by attackers to render victims confused or unconscious and vulnerable to sexual assault. “Some victims were taken to hospital for toxicological tests,” the ministry said.
In Paris, investigations were opened after three people, including a 15-year-old girl and an 18-year-old male, reported being stabbed in separate incidents across Paris, prosecutors said. All three reported feeling unwell. Across France, 12 suspects have been arrested, the interior ministry said. Among them were four people in the south-western city of Angoulême suspected of having targeted about 50 victims, a police source said.
/…/ There was a wave of reports in 2022 about alleged syringe attacks against women and men in clubs, bars, music events and even theatres. The government put out messages at the time for people going out at night to be vigilant and advising them that they should go immediately to the police and also have a toxicology test if they thought they had been drugged by a syringe prick.
Since another person linked to a story about this on Twitter, of all things, I did some background checking. Does not look like a “panic”, but a new genre of crime.
The mayor of the city of Metz, identifiable, writes on social media (Instagram) confirming the occurrence. Confirming that arrests have been made. Other sources (among them old media outlets like the Guardian, see above link) report about it.
Incitement allegedly occurred over social media. It will be investigated where it occurred. Victims have been sent to toxicology. It will be investigated what was injected, if anything. Some victims reported feeling unwell.
Guess: in a crowd, it is relatively easy to anonymously attack someone and hope to leave little evidence. However, this time, it has been claimed that some assailants were detained on the spot. There will be information confirming or denying this pretty soon.
Confirming that arrests have been made.
Very easy for police to grab random people out of a music festival and throw them in jail.
These social panic stories, in which unnamed sources make nonfalsifiable claims that result in some number of uninvestigated allegations and a series of possibly unrelated arrests stinks of Satanic Panic or Razorblades In the Halloween Candy or Haitian Immigrants are Eating Our Dogs, or any number of other news stories built on gossip.
Last time I heard about this it was all over Facebook and shit.
Then the government, police and drs came out and said there was no evidence and when you think about it it doesn’t make any sense.
Honestly how many women have you seen smash way way too many drinks and claim they got spiked. No you weigh fuck all, you were smashing drinks, thats why you can’t stand. We’ve all drank too much.
Of course the 145 police reports don’t count. This is 145 women were talking about.
During the 80s example I gave it was men that were reporting it.
Anyone can file a police report. And if they believe they were a victim then they are more likely to do that.
So they just imagined it, is that what you are saying?
And this info is based upon what exactly?
Did you read the link I included in my previous comment?
The people planning this and walking around doing the pricking…
There’s a classic death metal song by Cannibal Corpse called “Hammer Smashed Face”.
And that 145 is just those who noticed. I regularly have to self administer injections and they’re often nearly painless once you’re used to doing it, especially with small gauge needles.
I’m gonna assume it was boys doing the pricking?
EDIT: surprise! It was boys.
Removed by mod
I’m sorry, how does this apply to trans people at all?
When your takeaway from every bad thing that happens is “can i blame exclusively men?” You are already treading very close to that bigoted rhetoric.
I get that it’s a frustrating accusation, but as a man I recognise it as generally true, even if I don’t resonate with it. Women rarely commit mass shootings, rapes, stabbings, forced drugging, muggings. The people causing trouble in my neighbourhood are exclusive male teenagers and the only genuine threat to me ever is by other men. And no, it’s of course not an inherent feature in male genetics, nor is it anything close to “all men”, but it’s a cultural issue based on how we’re raised and it should be fair game to discuss it - although with a better tone than what’s normally applied.
I’m so perplexed by this. Calling somebody a terf in a situation when it doesn’t make any sense to even use the word.
I feel like this is some sort of anti-trans social engineering.
That’s a reach.
Either way, sounds like the suspects are boys. Go cry about it.
cry about it
Yeah that’s usually what terfs say when you call them out.
You’re just trying to make people think badly about trans people. I don’t believe you’re being genuine.
Jesus Fucking Christ, Paris
This could literally have happened anywhere
(This literally does happen everywhere)
It was happening on the NYC subway some years back, people were poking people with syringes contaminated with HIV
Source?
People have different definitions of major incidents apparently…
“including a 17-year-old who was hospitalized after being found sitting on the street with stab wounds to the lower abdomen.”
“The prefect of the Paris police, Laurent Nunez, said that “no major incident has been reported.””
A single person being stabbed isn’t a “major incident” if you’re the chief of police or whatever a prefect is.
I believe (and hope) that it’s just ambiguously written, the first part is discussing incidents throughout the country while the prefect was obviously just talking about Paris.
A lot of oddly worded bits in that article.
Journalists write like garbage these days.
Could someone please shoot whoever wrote the headline?
