Throughout the duration of the Paris 2024 Olympic Games, some 5,000 soldiers will be housed in tents on the Reuilly lawn, in the 12th arrondissement of the capital, in order to ensure their responsiveness if necessary. “This camp will have the particularity of being extremely close to the heart of Paris,” General Christophe Abad, military governor of Paris, declared this Wednesday during a round table devoted to Games security.
“The proximity between parking locations and deployment locations is a strategic issue which carries within it the challenge of the mobility and reactivity of our forces,” he explained. The number of soldiers who will be deployed to reinforce the police and gendarmerie staff and compensate for probable shortages of private security agents during the Olympic period has not been specified. There could be nearly 15,000, according to observers.
30,000 police officers and gendarmes + 17,000 private security agents
To accommodate them, General Abad recalled the existence of “around fifteen barracks in Ile-de-France” used in particular to house soldiers deployed as part of Operation Sentinel. This operation, launched in 2015 after the attack on the satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo in Paris, allows the deployment of up to 7,000 soldiers to secure public spaces against the risk of attack.
Some 30,000 police officers and gendarmes must be mobilized every day, as well as 17,000 private security agents during the Olympic and Paralympic period, which runs from July 26 to September 8.