More than a thousand cars burned and hundreds of people detained on New Year’s Eve night – this is the toll just released by France’s Ministry of the Interior. Despite the deployment of tens of thousands of police officers and gendarmes across the country, France did not avoid breaking the grim records set last year.
Just before New Year’s Eve, France’s Minister of the Interior, Laurent Nuñez, delivered a high-profile address. The politician made firm declarations, including assurances of a strong nationwide deployment of police and gendarmerie units and the implementation of a “zero tolerance” policy toward perpetrators of riots and crimes. Despite the fact that 90,000 officers were on duty across the country during the night of December 31 to January 1, these unenviable records were nevertheless surpassed.
According to the Ministry of the Interior, “1,173 vehicles burned across the country.” It was noted that this figure exceeded last year’s record of 984 cars set on fire. The daily Le Figaro, reporting on the course of New Year’s Eve night, wrote of “traditional car fires.”
Moreover, 505 people were arrested nationwide, of whom 403 were taken into custody. Here again, last year’s record was broken—420 arrests and 310 detentions. In Paris alone, according to the local prosecutor’s office, 125 people were detained.
Alongside fireworks, New Year’s revelers used mortars. As the press notes, beyond entertainment, mortars also served as a means of confrontation with the police.
“In several cities, riots broke out: in Rezé (Loire-Atlantique), a police station fell victim to repeated mortar fire, and 24 vehicles were burned. In Strasbourg, according to various police sources, more than a hundred vehicles were set on fire, around thirty people were arrested, and more than twenty police officers sustained minor injuries. The city of Rennes was one of the most unstable places on New Year’s Eve: a group of around one hundred people attacked law enforcement officers with mortars and projectiles, injuring a public-order police officer, according to several corroborating sources. This attack added to the long list of officers injured across France during the night,”
Le Figaro reported.
There were also more serious crimes. On New Year’s Eve night in Marseille, a 36-year-old Algerian man was stabbed five times. He died in hospital. Law enforcement authorities also recorded a series of attempted murders.
“In Bagnolet, ‘a young man with four gunshot wounds to the pelvis went to a clinic in Seine-Saint-Denis accompanied by his father’ after shots were fired on the street. In Trappes, a man in his thirties, ‘well known to the police, reported himself to emergency services with a gunshot wound to the thigh,’”
Le Figaro reported.
A clip from a live broadcast also gained popularity online. It shows a young man fleeing the police while carrying a lit mortar.