A municipal police patrol (illustration). - C. VILLEMAIN / 20 MINUTES

  • The municipal elections are held on March 15 and 22, 2020. Each Monday, 20 Minutes will address a theme of the campaign. Today, the challenges around security.
  • For a long time, Anne Hidalgo opposed the creation of a municipal police force before turning around last year.
  • The challenge of this campaign mainly concerns the arming or not of agents.

Anne Hidalgo hammered him for a long time: there was no question of creating a municipal police force under his mandate. For years, the mayor of Paris has deemed it useless, expensive and superfluous. She finally turned around last January taking her opponents by surprise. If the latter saw it as a political calculation in the run-up to the elections, the elected official justified this reversal by the feeling of growing insecurity manifested by Parisians.

According to an audit commissioned in October 2018 by the town hall, 65% of Parisians believe that the capital is a safe city, but one in two feels that the situation has deteriorated and that incivility has increased in recent years. This feeling of insecurity is particularly palpable at night, in transport (63%), on the street (59%) and in parks (55%). And almost one woman in two complains of harassment on the public highway. A feeling confirmed by the poor figures of 2018 and 2019. In the first nine months of last year, burglaries increased by 8%, non-villainous acts of violence by almost 10% and sexual violence by more than 3%.

"The municipal police must allow each and everyone to live a more peaceful life," declared the councilor when he announced the creation of the direction of prevention, security and protection. If this service does not yet officially have the status of municipal police - the technical amendment was adopted by the National Assembly in November -, it already has 3,400 agents from various departments of the city. Its objective: to fight against daily nuisances and incivility. "I want women to take on positions of authority that are more visible in the public arena," Anne Hidalgo said in her creation. This may also help to fight against this street harassment. This police force will also be trained in respect and in particular on issues of combating homophobia and sexism. "

Armaments at the heart of the debate

If the creation of a municipal police force is an almost unanimous will shared by the candidates - only the communists and the rebellious ones oppose it, the Greens plead for a brigade of public security and tranquility, "light" version of the municipal police force -, it is the question of their armament which divides: should or not equip these agents with a lethal weapon? Anne Hidalgo refused, preferring to equip the agents with batons and tear gas canisters. In the eyes of the city councilor, a firearm is not only useless for these agents whose main mission is to ensure public tranquility but is also expensive in terms of funding and training.

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Benjamin Griveaux shared his point of view before joining the clan of candidates favorable to armament, alongside Rachida Dati (LR), Gaspard Gantzer (leader of Parisiennes, Parisiens) or Serge Ferderbusch (supported by the National Gathering). "My position changed in a few months by talking to people in the police hierarchy," said the candidate LREM to 20 Minutes last November. And to specify: " When we send men and women with marked police on the jacket in the street, with only a baton, we create not a police force, but targets". Benjamin Griveaux, who wants to increase to 5,000 the number of municipal police, says he is ready to put 100 million euros "more than today". Thursday, the former government spokesperson announced that he had presented the day before a bill to create this municipal police force, after the rejection in late November of an amendment, tabled by the left and rejected by the Macronistes in the National Assembly , during a sitting where the member for Paris was absent. As for Cédric Villani, if he wants to increase the workforce to 4,500 agents, he has not made a clear statement on their arming.

If the municipal police polarize most of the debate on security in Paris, several candidates have found it useful to supplement their program in this area with other measures. Thus, Rachida Dati told us in November that he wanted to use private security in addition to the municipal police to "ensure the surveillance of sensitive sites and public buildings, so as to allow the national police to refocus on its essential missions [investigation , arrest] ”. The RN candidate, Serge Ferderbusch, pleads for citizen rounds in the districts. “We must give back the question of security to Parisians, who the citizens themselves provide and participate in their own security. It's democratic and popular, ”he confided at the beginning of the year to 20 Minutes .

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  • security
  • Local police
  • municipal
  • Anne Hidalgo
  • Paris town hall
  • Paris