VIDEO. Visiting Lyon, Gérald Darmanin criticizes the mayor and recalls the arrival of “200 additional police officers” in January

“What they are going through is unacceptable.” The Minister of the Interior, Gérald Darmanin, spoke to journalists on Saturday July 30, after meeting residents and merchants of La Guillotière, in Lyon. It is in this district of the 3rd arrondissement of the Rhône prefecture that police officers were attacked on July 20. During his visit, Gérald Darmain met these injured police officers and went to the police station of the 3rd and 6th arrondissements, on which the Guillotière district depends.

“I will write to the mayor tomorrow”promised the Minister. Mayor of Lyon EELV, elected in 2020, Grégory Doucet announced on Friday on Twitter that he refused to take part in Gérald Darmanin’s visit. In particular he writes: “Net 300 more national police officers, that was his commitment two years ago at my request. That’s what we’re still waiting for. I won’t be present.”

“I think the absentees are always wrong” and “that the mayor made a serious mistake not to be present”criticized the tenant of Place Beauvau on Saturday. “I am not a candidate for the elections in Lyon so he has nothing to fear”, he quipped, promising to return in September. A few hours earlier, in the “12/13” of France 3 Rhône-Alpes, Gérald Darmanin had called the mayor “to do his job as mayor”.

The Minister of the Interior insisted that he “there were more than 100 policemen” additional in Lyon since he has been a minister. He recalled the maintenance in Lyon of“a new permanent CRS brigade” and “200 additional PAF police officers [Police aux frontières] who arrive in January to hold [s]a promise of 300 additional police officers in three years”. In addition, Gérald Darmanin invited Grégory Doucet to install more CCTV cameras, when there are already around 570 of this type in Lyon. It’s necessary “that we can have our hands on these video protection cameras”he insisted.