Nearly 1,000 vehicles were set on fire and more than 400 people were arrested in France on New Year's Eve, Interior Minister Bruno Retailleau said on Wednesday, denouncing a “too heavy” toll, “produced of wildness.”
“We do not have the right to settle for this annual count, which is always too heavy,” the minister wrote in a press release. “This violence is the product of wildness,” he adds, denouncing “cowards, thugs who attack the property of often modest French people, who do not have the means to protect their vehicles in private parking spaces.
90,000 police and gendarmes mobilized
There were a total of “984 vehicles set on fire”, “420 arrests” and “310 people in police custody”, particularly after fireworks mortars targeting the police, details the minister.
“More than 90,000 police officers and gendarmes” were mobilized for this New Year’s Eve night where “numerous uses of mortars were noted,” deplores the minister, citing in particular the case of a two-year-old child injured in the face by a mortar shot in Lyon.
A “judicial response”
Faced with this “gratuitous and endemic violence”, “the security response is essential” but “cannot be sufficient”, he continues, calling for a “judicial response” that is “up to par”. “On this point, I welcome the first statements from the Keeper of the Seals” and former Minister of the Interior Gérald Darmanin, writes Bruno Retailleau. “With Gérald Darmanin, today we have the opportunity, and the responsibility, to finally engage, together, in the battle against impunity,” he said again.
Last year, 380 arrests and 745 vehicles burned were counted during the night of December 31 to January 1.
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