{"id":382990,"date":"2026-03-13T10:56:12","date_gmt":"2026-03-13T10:56:12","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/382990\/"},"modified":"2026-03-13T10:56:12","modified_gmt":"2026-03-13T10:56:12","slug":"the-race-for-paris-will-more-armed-police-and-more-cameras-make-the-city-safer","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/382990\/","title":{"rendered":"The race for Paris: Will more armed police and more cameras make the city safer?"},"content":{"rendered":"

Is it safe to walk the streets of Paris<\/a>? Fewer and fewer Parisians certainly seem to think so.<\/p>\n

An IFOP-Fiducial opinion poll<\/a> published in the lead-up to the first round of the municipal elections this Sunday showed that public safety had risen to the number-one concern of Parisians ahead of the ballot.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Eager to play to their traditional strengths, right-wing candidates including former culture minister Rachida Dati<\/a> have hammered the need for urgent action to keep the city safe, including massively expanding the city\u2019s network of video surveillance cameras and putting thousands of armed city police<\/a> officers onto the streets of Paris.<\/p>\n

Whether or not the figures back up the belief that crime<\/a> rates are rising in the capital is fiercely contested. Crime statistics released by the interior ministry for 2025 show that robbery<\/a> and violent thefts continue to decline in the capital<\/a>, while recorded incidents of sexual assault<\/a> and violence appear to have risen in line with national trends.<\/p>\n

And while more and more surveys reveal that the French are grappling with a rising feeling of insecurity, the proportion that actually feel personally unsafe in their own neighbourhoods has remained largely stable over the years<\/a>.<\/p>\n

In any case, these concerns will likely be at the forefront of many Parisians’ minds when they vote in the tight-run race for the city\u2019s new mayor<\/a> on Sunday.<\/p>\n

Read moreThe race for Paris: How the capital\u2019s housing crisis could determine the city\u2019s next mayor<\/a><\/p>\n

Just what they expect him or her to do about it is another question. Paris\u2019s H\u00f4tel de Ville has many powers, but launching criminal investigations into organised crime<\/a> or dismantling international narcotrafficking networks are not among them.<\/p>\n

The national police force tasked with tackling major crime in the capital answers to the Paris Prefecture, which answers in turn to France\u2019s interior ministry.<\/p>\n

As a result, candidates from across the political spectrum have pledged to deploy thousands of officers belonging to the city\u2019s nascent municipal police.<\/p>\n

Far-right candidate Sarah Knafo has called for the number of municipal police officers patrolling the streets of Paris to be almost quadrupled to 8,000, with centre-right candidate Pierre-Yves Bournazel and Dati demanding 6,000 and 5,000 respectively.<\/p>\n

On the left, which at different points in its history has looked to the municipal police as a chance to put an elusive model of “community policing” into practice, the push for more manpower has also found support.<\/p>\n

Socialist candidate Emmanuel Gr\u00e9goire has called for the city\u2019s police force to be swelled by 1,000 new members, and for 500 fresh CCTV cameras to be installed across the city. Hard-left candidate Sophia Chikirou has also called for a little more than 1,000 new officers to be recruited, with both candidates stressing the need for officers to be better trained in responding to violence against women and sexual assault.\u00a0<\/p>\n

A rising force <\/p>\n

Created in 2021 by outgoing Socialist Mayor Anne Hidalgo<\/a>, this force of roughly 2,400 officers is largely tasked with tackling the day-to-day misdemeanours that might be expected in any major city of some two-million-odd souls: routine traffic violations including speeding and illegal parking, dumping rubbish in public spaces, selling souvenirs and cigarettes on the city\u2019s sidewalks and a host of other minor public disturbances.<\/p>\n

They have no power to conduct criminal investigations<\/a>, conduct searches or place suspects under police custody. The only time they can apprehend a suspect is if they catch them in the act of committing a crime \u2013 and even then, they must immediately bring them before another member of law enforcement, and hand them over.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n

Despite these limited powers, the number \u2013 and cost \u2013 of the country\u2019s municipal police forces has risen dramatically in recent years. In 2013, there were 20,000 officers across France. By 2023, that number had risen 40 percent to 28,000<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Dimitri Coste, a PhD candidate in political science writing a thesis on the capital\u2019s municipal police at the Centre for Sociological Research on Law and Penal Institutions (CESDIP), said that municipal police forces\u2019 meteoric rise seemed to have little connection with the country\u2019s overall crime rate.<\/p>\n

\u201cSince the 1980s, broadly speaking, there has been a renewed focus on security issues by mayors, and since then, municipal police forces have been growing steadily \u2013 quite independently of crime statistics,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

\u201cIn fact, to date, you can\u2019t say that there is a link one way or the other \u2013 that is to say, it\u2019s not because there is more crime that more municipal police forces are being created, nor is it because there are more municipal police forces that crime statistics are falling.\u201d<\/p>\n

Over roughly that same period, the percentage of those municipal police officers that go about their duties while armed has risen from 38 percent to 58 percent \u2013 Paris remaining a notable exception.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Watch moreParis mayoral race: Can the left hold on to the French capital?<\/a><\/p>\n

Coste said that the fatal shooting of municipal police officer Clarissa Jean-Philippe<\/a> in a 2015 terror attack had been a key factor in the push to arm France\u2019s local police.<\/p>\n

\u201cBeing armed doesn\u2019t correspond to their needs in order to fulfill their mission \u2013 municipal police work focuses on what could be called petty crime,\u201d he said. \u201cSo there is no operational need for them to be armed in order to fulfill their missions.\u201d<\/p>\n

AI-led surveillance <\/p>\n

The question of whether or not Paris\u2019s municipal police should be armed has become a point of bitter contention in the race for the capital\u2019s next mayor. Here, we see a return to the sharp political divide between left and right: Dati, Knafo and Bournazel have all called for the city\u2019s police officers to be armed, while Gr\u00e9goire and Chikirou have held fast against the idea.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cWhat we are seeing today is that the issue of arming the municipal police is first and foremost a political dividing line. For example, in the case of Paris, what we are seeing is that all the main candidates agree on keeping the municipal police force in place,\u201d Coste said. \u201cMost of them will increase the number of municipal police officers, but the main divide between the right and the left is the issue of firearms.\u201d<\/p>\n

Strengthening Paris\u2019s municipal police is not the only means that the city\u2019s next mayor has at their disposal. A number of candidates have also proposed widely expanding the city\u2019s network of video surveillance cameras, with Dati in particular pledging to roll out a total of 8,000 \u2013 double the number in the capital now. By installing a camera in every street \u2013 a measure that will need to be negotiated with the city\u2019s police prefecture \u2013 she says Paris will have no \u201cblind spots\u201d left.<\/p>\n

\"This<\/p>\n

This photograph shows a CCTV surveillance camera with a statue of the Grand Palais Olympic site in the background in Paris on July 22, 2024. \u00a9 Emmanuel Dunand, AFP <\/p>\n

The far-right Knafo, whose unexpectedly strong polling in the lead-up to the vote could see her positioned as kingmaker moving into the March 22 runoff, has gone even further, suggesting integrating \u201cAI technology\u201d into the city\u2019s surveillance system to better \u201cdetect and prevent\u201d crimes.<\/p>\n

But even if the city\u2019s next mayor is prepared to invest in the number of personnel needed to oversee such wide-scale surveillance, researchers remain unconvinced on just how much these cameras actually dissuade criminals \u2013 or help law enforcement catch them.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhat we’ve observed, regardless of the territory, is that cameras installed in public spaces have no deterrent effect,\u201d Sciences Po Grenoble researcher Guillaume Gormand told AFP.<\/p>\n

A 2021 study by the Research Centre of the National Gendarmerie Officers’ School found that evidence collected from surveillance cameras was useful \u201conly in a marginal proportion of investigations\u201d.<\/p>\n

\u201cThere have been a few studies that have looked into this issue, but they have never provided evidence of a direct link between a reduction in crime and the presence of video surveillance cameras,\u201d Coste said. \u201cAt best, what we see is more of a displacement of crime once the presence of cameras is identified.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Is it safe to walk the streets of Paris? Fewer and fewer Parisians certainly seem to think so.…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":382991,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_share_on_mastodon":"0"},"categories":[269],"tags":[18,11903,440,10414,3617,2220,19,17,21991,11935,5915,175655,133,5189],"class_list":["post-382990","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-environment","tag-eire","tag-elections","tag-environment","tag-far-right","tag-features","tag-france","tag-ie","tag-ireland","tag-mayor","tag-paris","tag-police","tag-rachida-dati","tag-science","tag-surveillance"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@ie\/116221508532104884","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/382990","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=382990"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/382990\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/382991"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=382990"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=382990"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=382990"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}