• The town hall of Lyon has undertaken to increase the number of its municipal police to bring them to 365 officers by 2026.

  • If 53 have already been recruited, 78 are still missing to reach the goal.

  • The city is clearly struggling to enlist volunteers due to the lack of attractiveness of the profession, which has been declining for several years.

The conclusion is clear.

If the town hall of Lyon has undertaken to increase the number of municipal police to bring them to 365 agents, by the end of the mandate, the volunteers are not jostling at the gate.

Fifty-three have already been recruited over the past two years, but 78 are still missing to reach the set target.

"20% of the necessary staff are currently absent", sums up Laurent Bosetti, assistant to human resources, constant that the "job market is in extreme tension".

Worse: between 2021 and 2022, the city, which currently has 287 municipal police officers, experienced more departures than arrivals in the profession.

"In total, we recorded a decline of 10 agents," confirms Laurent Bosetti.

“Chronic difficulty in recruiting”

Should we see a disaffection for the city of Lyon, which has been experiencing an upsurge in violence for several months?

Or more generally a lack of attractiveness of the profession?

"We don't want to throw stones at our predecessors, but the city experienced the same tensions under Gérard Collomb.

Between 2019 and 2020, we had recorded a decline of 30 municipal police officers, ”he recalls.

And to add: “The problem is not specific to the ecological or left-wing town hall.

We are facing a glass ceiling that exists in all major cities in France”.

“This chronic difficulty in recruiting is the same everywhere, abounds the mayor of Lyon Grégory Doucet.

At the national level, where there are 24,000 municipal police officers, between 4,500 and 6,000 positions have been opened.

They are still not filled.

»

Lyon is still faced with an "aging population", 20% of agents who have left the profession are retiring.

The others preferred to embrace a new career.

“They did not leave to integrate other municipal police.

Ten secondments are linked to retraining projects in other professions, observes Laurent Bosetti.

We are not going to tell stories, there is currently a loss of attractiveness of the profession.

»

Salary increase

To upgrade and “re-enchant” the profession in order to attract more volunteers, the city of Lyon has increased salaries, “which had not been done for 18 years”.

More than half of the workforce has already benefited from an increase of 1,400 euros gross per year.

This represents an overall envelope of 500,000 euros.

Thursday, during the municipal council, the majority was to vote for a new increase: an additional 50,000 euros granted to a hundred municipal police officers.



“With this new revaluation, the net salary of a municipal police officer in Lyon will be 2,500 euros per month, bonuses included”, supports Laurent Bosetti.

But given their missions, "these are not privileges", he believes.

The city also intends to change the status of its agents by raising the ceiling of the compensation scheme for the municipal police.

"I plan to make a request to the newly appointed Minister of Public Service for a category C agent to be upgraded to category B", indicates Grégory Doucet, also calling for the creation of a national school of municipal police training.

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