About ten agents in an arc, all turned towards a wall of surveillance screens. It is in this new operational command room that Nicolas Nordman, deputy mayor of Paris in charge of prevention, victim assistance and security unveiled the outlines of the new Paris municipal police, this Friday morning.
Installed in the Napoléon barracks on the Place Baudoyer (4th arrondissement), the new headquarters of the municipal police and prevention directorate will host this brand new unit resulting from the merger between the security inspectors of the City of Paris (ISVP ) and the Paris surveillance agents (ASP).
The project, designed in 2019, was made concrete thanks to the promulgation of the comprehensive security law in May 2021. Under the direction of Michel Felkay, now former director of the prevention, security and protection department ( DPSP), the municipal police will now have four main missions listed by Nicolas Nordman
Proximity, prevention, repression
The first: “Protect pedestrians by ensuring that the traffic rules for scooters, bicycles and other cars are respected. The second mission is to return to an “ultra-proximity” police force by securing the streets with a significant presence on foot or by bicycle, with a municipal police division per district, every day and until late at night, “Midnight all year round and 2 am in the summer period”. One of its prerogatives will be, for example, to prevent fights between gangs.
This municipal police will have for third mission “to appease the city” by limiting the noise, disturbing gatherings and other disturbances. For this, it will have sound level meters, for vehicles that are too noisy for example, and a whole range of verbalizations (ranging from traffic to incivility), where these skills were previously distributed between different departments. Finally, its other mission will be to enforce the cleanliness of the capital, by reporting and sanctioning illegal deposits, excessive bulky items and other throwing of cigarette ends.
Target 5,000 agents in 2026
To achieve these objectives, the new municipal police will see its workforce gradually grow to reach 5,000 officers by the end of the current term, in 2026. Of the 210 internal candidates who participated in the first physical, regulatory and psychological training , identical to that provided by the national center of the territorial public service (CNFPT) to municipal police officers from other local communities, 154 obtained the evaluation last April. These first agents will be presented on Monday at 3:30 p.m. on the forecourt of the Town Hall. They will be joined before the end of the year by 400 other agents: 280 recruited internally and 120 others recruited externally.
To carry out their mission, these municipal police officers will be armed with bulletproof vests, Tonfa batons, tear gas canisters and handcuffs. The equipment will also contain a camera-pedestrian. The question of the carrying of weapons had seen opposition between the various groups of the city council.
No confusion with the national police
Present alongside Nicolas Nordman, Emmanuel Grégoire, first deputy of Anne Hidalgo, wished to recall that the new municipal police should not replace the national police. Helped by Michel Felkay, he clarified the difference in the role of each to avoid confusion. The municipal police represent “a first level of intervention”. More precisely, except on the missions incumbent on it, the municipal police can intervene on a flagrante delicto, for a theft as for an armed person, it has “a capacity of intervention, of constraint of body”, but that the interpellation and taking into custody, “it is the role of the national police”. This can be verified from Tuesday and the commissioning of the first teams of this new unit.