Looting, destruction and sometimes powerless police officers. Laurent Nuñez, Minister of the Interior, admitted on Monday October 19 on France Inter that the police "lost control" after the violence of October 17. The government announced Monday that "at least 3,000 businesses" had been affected by damage or looting this weekend and that they could benefit from partial unemployment measures from Tuesday as well as a "specific support fund".
1 How big a failure is this for government and law enforcement?
Like an admission of failure. During his speech, the president asked the Minister of the Interior to deploy a new doctrine for maintaining order in the face of thugs. On France Inter, Monday morning, Laurent Nuñez indicated that he had submitted his resignation to the president. “I have a sense of the general interest and, given the damage that has been done, it was normal for me to resign,” explained the Minister of the Interior. A resignation refused by the President of the Republic.
A senior officer makes a comparison with the firefighters in Gironde this summer, faced with gigantic and uncontrollable fires. “It’s very difficult to fight against something of this magnitude,” he explains. Another speaks of "disaster", a word which combines in his mouth the result, but also the incapacity of the police to contain the thugs and the looters, with the means which were available.
2 Was there a lack of anticipation regarding the number of demonstrators?
Sunday evening, the President of the Republic very clearly pointed out “failures” in intelligence. First there is the number of demonstrators in the broad sense, which has been largely underestimated, in Paris as in the provinces. The intelligence services were counting on 200,000 people on the streets on Saturday, there were at least 550,000.
But if the delta is spectacular, for many police officers this is not the real problem, because overall, once the processions started, there was no particular incident in the demonstrations. In Paris for example, the clashes were confined for several hours to the Place de la République, the starting point of the parade, with clashes which had been anticipated with activists identified as ultra-left. At least 1,500 tear gas grenades were fired by a single CRS company.
3 Was the number of people considered to be thugs underestimated?
Yes, the detrimental lack of anticipation concerns the number of thugs-looters. The Bouches-du-Rhône prefecture speaks of 30,000 looters, a figure qualified by the mayor of Marseille, Benoît Payan. In some cities, we did not see the time coming when the abuses would begin. In Marseille, the violence began at 8:30 a.m.
It seems, taking into account what goes back to franceinfo, that the anticipation for Paris was more accurate. The intelligence department of the police headquarters had put forward the hypothesis of several thousand looters, likely to wander in wild processions. On the other hand, for the rest of the territory, the national directorate of territorial intelligence, another structure which compiles and analyzes feedback from police officers in the departments, seems to have been overwhelmed.
4 Was the number of forces deployed insufficient?
The number of police and gendarmes deployed was supposed to be proportionate to forecasts. Obviously, if anticipation is not good, it is difficult to have enough people to prevent and contain unrest. On France Inter, Laurent Nuñez gave the number of law enforcement officers engaged on Saturday: 60,000 in France. This is significantly less than the 80,000 mobilized for the “Let’s Block Everything” day, September 10, 2025, or the 89,000 engaged on December 8, 2018 for act 4 of the yellow vests.
In Paris, a police source indicates that the demand for mobile force units, that is to say CRS companies, squadrons of mobile gendarmes, has not been met. Knowing that, for example, for the capital, many CRS have been mobilized in order to protect certain strategic sites such as the Elysée, the National Assembly or the Town Hall. When processions of several hundred people then wander all over Paris, it is more difficult to prevent them from causing harm.
