Fortunately, reassures the mayor of Nîmes, Jean-Paul Fournier (Les Républicains, LR), the Feria falls early this year (from May 16 to 20, for the first part). She will therefore be able to stand with “some additional reinforcements” police, he told the local media Objective GardApril 15: “Canceling the fair, with a million people over five days, would have had consequences on our economic fabric”he emphasizes.
But for the concerts of the Nîmes Festival, which will be held in July in the Arena, it is another matter. Due to the Olympic Games (JO) in Paris, “nearly 40% of Nîmes police officers had to be recruited”, the elected official is alarmed in the same interview. Figure immediately contested by the Gard prefecture, which evokes the mobilization of“on average 15% of the total departmental workforce” and until “18%” Nîmes police officers from July 22 to 25.
Mr. Fournier is not the only one to worry, however. Many mayors fear seeing their police forces being “sucked in” by the security system that will be deployed this summer in the capital. This is of course the case for those who are preparing to receive tourists on the coast. The Minister of the Interior, Gérald Darmanin, had also warned in the fall of 2022 “that there will be no beach CRS” the year of the Games.
” Contempt “
Same concern elsewhere in France. When he discovered in the press that “50% of the police force will be absent from the city” during the summer, the blood of the various right-wing mayor of Limoges only made one turn. He wrote to Gérald Darmanin on April 9. To his “Dear Gerald”Emile Roger Lombertie criticizes having left the administration “treat with such contempt” the elected officials, who were neither informed nor prepared, he deplores.
And he apostrophes: “What should we do in the event of problems like we experienced last summer [durant les émeutes urbaines de juin 2023] since no law enforcement force will be available? Should we de facto accept that citizens who are exasperated and disturbed day and night take justice into their own hands? »he wrote, assuring that, from then on, he would see himself “obligated to stand alongside the threatened population to defend its security”.
The mayor of Limoges recalls that his city is home to “nine priority neighborhoods, which exploded in summer 2023”. “If we do not have sufficient national police officersexplains Emile Roger Lombertie, We will call the municipal police. But she doesn’t have the same skills…”
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