457 arrests and 441 police officers and gendarmes injured. The day after the 9th day of mobilization against the pension reform – the first since the use by the government of article 49.3 to have the project adopted – Gérald Darmanin drew up an initial assessment of the overflows recorded. Guest of Cnews, the Minister of the Interior also affirmed that there had been “903 fires of street furniture or garbage cans” Thursday in Paris during the inter-union demonstration.
Like Thursday evening at the Paris police headquarters, Gérald Darmanin underlined the “radicalization” of the demonstrators by pointing the finger at the violence of the “extreme left”. “The far left wants to attack the Republic,” he said, believing that “a collective message of condemnation” was needed. He was surprised at the lack of reaction from politicians to the number of police officers and gendarmes injured, “a few thousand” since the start of the challenge to the pension reform. There is, he said, “a national sport of smearing the police and the gendarmes.” “The country must wake up and condemn the extreme left and the rebels. They are few in number but they are extremely violent,” he continued.
1,500 black blocks
About the black blocks, “thugs” whose number was estimated at “1,500” in the Parisian procession on Thursday, Gérald Darmanin judged that they should be called “black bourges”, because they are “people of good family”. He judged that if the latter “could kill” a policeman or a gendarme “they would be delighted”.
He underlined the “formidable” work of the police to “avoid a death”. “There were no deaths, no serious injuries,” continued the minister, who however mentioned the case of a demonstrator seriously injured in Rouen in conditions not yet determined.