The general commissioner, Jean-François Illy, former boss of the DDSP – departmental director of public security – of the Alpes-Maritimes, is also the former boss of the Bas-Rhin police. He was there during the 2018 Christmas market attack.
An Islamist attack perpetrated on December 11 by Chérif Chekatt. The radicalized common law offender opened fire and left 5 dead and 11 injured. At the end of a manhunt orchestrated by Jean-François Illy, the terrorist was shot dead, 48 hours after the tragedy.
You were in charge of securing the Christmas market from 2012 to 2018, what developments have you noted?
From 2012 to 2015, it was a friendly market, with security organized by the communities. And then there was the turning point in 2015 with the attacks. And there has been an increase in the security of Christmas markets with the implementation of enormous systems: several units, filtering, controlled deliveries, verification at checkpoints, etc. But obviously, this cannot be completely waterproof. On the other hand, it reassures people and forces all security services to be extremely vigilant. To this, we had to add the intense work, also upstream, of the intelligence services. Everything was passed through a sieve.
What happened on December 11, 2018?
The difficulty is the volume of force granted. And to know whether at the same time, it is necessary to carry out law enforcement missions such as demonstrations, or elections, official visits, etc. In 2018, after the attack, Christophe Castaner, the Minister of the Interior, asked us how Chérif Chekatt was able to return. I told him the truth about the 3 or 4 units that were supposed to be present to secure the Christmas market, there was only one left, the others had gone on law enforcement missions. He didn't blame us for anything, so. The flaw in national security is that we give too many missions to the security forces.
You have been stationed in Nice and you know the Christmas market system, is it sufficient?
I think so, while obviously emphasizing the fact that there is always a gap in a security service. But then there is the ability to act quickly. In Nice, with the gates, the national and municipal police, the other security forces, the anti-intrusion terminals, it is locked. And then there are a lot of cameras. I think they should be decision-making tools, not just control tools. In this way, for example, facial recognition is a tool that we should not do without.
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