“984 vehicles burned”, “420 arrests” et “310 police custody”particularly after firework mortar shots targeting the police. These are the figures for New Year’s Eve revealed by Bruno Retailleau on Wednesday January 1st.
In Paris, 136 people were arrested and 104 placed in police custody, said the capital’s public prosecutor’s office, requested by AFP. Of the 104 people, 36 had their custody extended on Wednesday evening, 13 were summoned to court and 20 presented to a magistrate, “several” of whom must be tried this Thursday in immediate appearance, according to the public prosecutor.
For the Minister of the Interior, the toll was “too heavy”“product of wildness”. “We do not have the right to settle for this annual count, which is always too heavy,” he wrote in a press release. 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 lots”.
“More than 90,000 police and gendarmes” were mobilized for this New Year’s Eve night where “numerous uses of mortars were noted”, lamented Bruno Retailleau. Citing in particular the case of a two-year-old child injured in the face by a mortar shot in Lyon.
Figures up compared to 2023
Faced with this “gratuitous and endemic violence”, “the security response is essential” but “cannot be sufficient”, underlined the Minister of the Interior, calling for a “judicial response” to “meet”.
“On this point, I welcome the first statements from the Keeper of the Seals” and former Minister of the Interior Gérald Darmanin. “With Gérald Darmanin, today we have the opportunity and the responsibility to finally engage, together, the battle against impunity“, he declared again.
Last year, 380 arrests and 745 burned vehicles were counted during the night of December 31 to January 1.
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