“We find all the profiles of offenders that we had before the Covid”

The suspect is located: it is a man sitting with his back to his potential victim on the terrace of a restaurant. “We witnessed an attempted robbery”assures the deputy central commissioner of the 8th arrondissement of Paris, Quentin Bévan. The victim realized that we were getting their hands in his bag so, very quickly, the individual left the scene and rushed into a subway entrance to try to get away a little from the area where he tried to ‘work‘, as we say in our jargon.”

After two years of pandemic, tourists are back in Paris. And, with them, the pickpockets. As part of its tourism plan, the Paris police headquarters are mobilizing uniformed patrols in the streets to deter thieves and reassure passers-by. Other teams, in civilian clothes, track pickpockets, such as the anti-crime brigade of the 8th arrondissement of Paris.

Neither one nor two, the brigade puts the suspect under surveillance by plainclothes police, after his escape in the metro. “If we leave it in the wild, in a few minutes or a few hours, we will have a victim who will be stolenexplains curator Quentin Bévan. We prefer to keep an eye on this individual to try to put him out of harm’s way. As it stands, he didn’t really seize any items from the victim’s bag, so it wouldn’t allow him to be placed in police custody and have legal consequences.”

Near the Place de la Madeleine, a policewoman moves on foot, in civilian clothes. One of his colleagues is further away, two others are on scooters or motorcycles. They blend into the crowd. “With the Covid, there have been fewer tourists, less money, less travel and therefore fewer flights.notes Alain (the first name has been changed), the brigadier-in-chief. But it picks up.” “Last week, the investigation service of the 8th arrondissement arrested an author of a dozen acts of pickpocketing, theft from vehicles or from large hotels”continues the Deputy Central Commissioner.

“We find all the profiles of offenders that we had before the health crisis. Every day, we have arrests in flagrante delicto”

Quentin Bévan, Deputy Central Commissioner

at franceinfo

In the Opera district, the brigade falls on the suspect. He sits on a terrace for a few moments, gets up, goes to a restaurant then another… The man finally gets on a bus to Gare du Nord and leaves the tourist areas. No theft spotted in flagrante delicto, but no regrets for the chief brigadier: “We know he will come back. During the whole spinning, he did not manage to work but if he had stolen, we would have been there to challenge.” In July, the anti-crime brigade of the 8th arrondissement carried out around sixty arrests.