The current prefect of Isère and former prefect of Haut-Rhin Louis Laugier was named this Thursday, October 31 in the Council of Ministers director general of the national police and General Hubert Bonneau director general of the gendarmerie, announced the door- word of the Maud Bregeon government.
Postponed from Council of Ministers to Council of Ministers, these appointments have turned into a summer soap opera. With a deadline of the end of September. Date on which the two incumbents, Frédéric Veaux (police) and Christian Rodriguez (Gendarmerie) left their post to retire after having been extended due to the Olympic and Paralympic Games in Paris. Finally, we had to wait a month for them to be replaced at the end of a war of succession which had started well before the formation of Michel Barnier's government. Who are the new heads of law enforcement?
Louis Laugier confronted with drug trafficking in Grenoble
Louis Laugier, current prefect of Isère, has the particularity of having also been approached to lead the gendarmerie. Aged 59, this native of Paris is not a former top cop of the PJ like his predecessor, but he knows the house well.
Prefect of Haut-Rhin from 2020 to 2023
Unlike some of his predecessors, like Frédéric Veaux (2020-2024) or Frédéric Péchenard (2007-2012), Louis Laugier is not a former top cop of the PJ (judicial police) who became the boss of the PN. In Isère, he was confronted with the recent wave of murders linked to drug trafficking in Grenoble and its surrounding area. Grenoble prosecutor Éric Vaillant says of him that he has “an excellent vision of the issues”. He was in turn sub-prefect, chief of staff of the prefect of Yonne then secretary general of the Hautes-Alpes prefecture before joining the national police as head of the personnel management service then deputy director of human resources.
Prefect of Aveyron (September 2015-December 2017), Savoie (December 2017-August 2020), Haut-Rhin (August 2020-August 2023) and finally Isère, Louis Laugier won a long showdown policy facing, in particular, Alexandre Brugère, former chief of staff of Gérald Darmanin, Fabrice Gardon, boss of the judicial police Parisian, or even Hugues Moutouh, very right-wing prefect of the Alpes-Maritimes. He graduated from the Saint-Cyr military school, like General Hubert Bonneau. Both come from the same promotion, that of “General Callies”.
Hubert Bonneau, former boss of GIGN
General Bonneau is the second former boss of the GIGN, the elite unit of the gendarmerie, to access the position of director general of the gendarmerie, after Denis Favier, an icon of this body.
His period at the head of the GIGN (2014-2017) will be marked in January 2015 by the hunt for the Kouachi brothers, Chérif and Saïd, which ended in Dammartin-en-Goële where the two attackers of the satirical newspaper Charlie Hebdo were slaughtered. Aged 57, he is originally from Brest. Since September 2022, he has been commander of the gendarmerie in the Brittany region as well as the Western defense and security zone.
