The day of 1 May was agitated for the CGT. Wednesday, during the Paris event, Philippe Martinez was forced to leave the procession before the start of the event after being attacked by radicals. Once back in the crowd, the general secretary of the CGT attacked the police, accusing the police in particular for having charged "a CGT well identified". "Completely false," said Loïc Travers, deputy national secretary of the Île-de-France section of the Alliance police union, invited on Wednesday from Europe 1, deploring the "ideological and dogmatic anti-police" vision of the leader of the CGT .
"We do not wait for the 'black blocks' to form a core of 300 to 400 people"
According to the police unionist, the charge of the police responded to "a security reason". "For several weeks, we know that there will be 'black blocks', and they were present.We saw a crowd at the head of the procession, people dressed in black, faces hidden, who have arrived," he said. -he describes. There was therefore, added Loïc Travers, "a strict application of the instructions of the Prefecture of Police, under the law anticasseurs". For, he recalled, "from the moment we have a crowd with people who have their faces hidden, which is a crime, and who start throwing projectiles, we do not wait for them form a core of 300 to 400 people, we enter in direct ".
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The Deputy National Secretary of the Île-de-France section of Alliance also criticized the service of order of the CGT, which "also did not stop these 'black-blocks'".
"Perfect adaptation of police and gendarmes colleagues"
Returning again to the attitude of the police during the Paris demonstration, Loïc Travers explained that "the instructions were very clear". The mobile forces "should not let the processions of 'black-blocks' get bigger, and that's why they intervened." The "black blocks" always choose the same technique, he described, to be placed at the head of procession, or to cut the procession in two "to make collateral damage". "Philippe Martinez is part of this collateral damage," he concluded, adding that the CGT was "absolutely not".
The police unionist has more broadly rejected criticism pointing to a possible lack of security of the event, hailing "perfect adaptation of colleagues police and gendarmes today".