He admitted on Tuesday to having made a decision “which would not necessarily be the one [qu’il aurait] taken at the start of the mandate”. The environmentalist mayor of Bordeaux Pierre Hurmic announced Tuesday that he would create, by mid-2025, a new municipal police brigade, the support and security brigade, “whose agents, and they alone, will be equipped with a handgun. It is inspired by “the English Bobbies, only some of whom are authorized to have a firearm”.
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The fifty agents who will make up it, “will cover during the day, as a priority, the Capucins-Marne-Gintrac-Saint-Jean-Victor-Hugo areas, and will support the other brigades depending on events”, specifies the deputy security Marc Etcheverry. In the evening, they will be able to operate throughout the city. They will be equipped with vehicles “allowing them to move quickly from one point in the city to another”.
A municipal police strike in June
Long opposed to arming the municipal police, Pierre Hurmic had been facing frontal attacks from his opposition on security issues for months. It also suffered a strike by its municipal police officers at the end of June, who demanded to be equipped with lethal weapons. “The world has gotten worse, there are more and more weapons circulating in society, from there, I find it normal that on the side of the municipal police forces, there is also a way to respond to this increase is justified today. And I am very attentive to my municipal police. This got me thinking about responsibility. »
However, the elected official does not want his plan to be reduced to the creation of this armed brigade. The mayor of Bordeaux believes he “took the time” to provide “a global response to a complex question”. A new organization will also be put in place for the entire municipal police force, with “territorialization”. “We are going to create five geographic sectors and the police officers will be assigned to one of these five sectors every day,” explains Pierre Hurmic. I will ask them to travel mainly on foot or by bike. »
“While we hear some reduce the question of security to the sole debate on arming the municipal police, I have a more global approach than that,” continues the mayor. “Simply answering yes or no to the question of armament is too simplistic an answer. The plan we are carrying activates all the levers accessible to the local community. It outlines a Bordeaux vision of security: pragmatic and balanced. »
“A half measure”, according to the opposition
The opposition was quick to react. “This turnaround constitutes good news in our eyes,” writes the Bordeaux Ensemble group. “We welcome the decision to accede to our proposal to equip certain agents with lethal weapons. We recall that this also constituted a demand from the agents themselves who had filed a social alarm to this effect before the summer. We consider that this announcement constitutes a half-measure which, however, only partially responds to the demands of the agents. »
The Macronist group Renouveau Bordeaux, for its part, is calling for “an expansion of weaponry to all brigades and municipal police officers”. He also wants “real progress to improve the attractiveness of the municipal police profession: organization of working time, quality of premises, quality of protective equipment”. Finally, he asks for “the real increase in personnel on the ground, regularly put forward by Pierre Hurmic, but denied by his own figures”.
A request for assignment from a CRS company
Pierre Hurmic assures that, since the start of the mandate, “we have increased the creation of municipal police and mediator positions by 35%. We have strengthened the video protection system, which we have equipped with a real urban supervision center. And I asked the Minister of the Interior for the permanent assignment of a CRS company to Bordeaux. I will repeat this request during my meeting with him in two weeks. »
He recalled that “Bordeaux, like all large cities, is not spared from the violence that our society is going through.” Crimes and misdemeanors “increased sharply from 2016 to 2019 [+ 24,3 % par an]and since 2021 they have increased less significantly [+ 9,9 % par an] “, he said.
