Two investigations have been opened into the violence committed during Eric Zemmour’s meeting on Sunday, December 5. One of them relaunches the debate on the security of the candidates. One of the survey deals with the blows struck against activists of SOS Racisme, the other on the aggression against Eric Zemmour by joining the scene. A man in the audience threw himself on him, managing to reach him despite the security present around the candidate. And in particular police officers from the SDLP, the Protection Service attached to the national police force and one of whose missions is to protect, year round, personalities under threat, and candidates during presidential campaigns.
the Protection servicethat’s 1,260 police officers in all. Not all of them provide close protection, some are deployed in front of buildings. But protecting people is what occupies the most staff. Eric Zemmour was already protected as a polemicist because he was threatened.
Otherwise, the rule is to mobilize the police as soon as there is a declaration of candidacy. How much per candidate? It depends on the threat level. There is a scale, from 1 to 4, of the risk weighing on people. It is the Counterterrorism Coordination Unit, attached to the Prime Minister, which assigns the score. And from there applies a level of protection, constantly reassessed.
This is how at the height of the threats, in 2017, Benoît Hamon found himself with ten police officers seconded to his protection. “These exceptional devices have not yet been deployed”, tells us the national police, which does not want to communicate in detail on its protocols, “The level of security being by definition a defense secret”.
Without betraying secret defense protocols, the security services confide in being “tense” for 2022, because the violence escalates with each election. Remember the “Enfarinades”, then slapped Manuel Valls in 2017, the same gesture more recently against the president … “Crowd baths are a disaster for us”, a policeman tells us. An explicit private security officer: “The markets, the meetings, the danger comes from the hands, you have to visualize all the hands.” For example, on Eric Zemmour’s stroll in Villepinte, all the professionals with whom we spoke said: luckily the assailant had nothing in his hands, not even a pen with which he could have done a lot of damage …
The good news is that the health crisis will undoubtedly limit the number of meetings. The bad news is that candidates are going to want to get in touch everywhere else. Take selfies, an anxiety-provoking exercise for safety. “You have to stay close, ready to pounce at any moment” explains a bodyguard.
In France, it is the candidate who has the last word on what he wants to do or not, while in the United States, it is the Secret Service. “And the security services must adapt” regrets a policeman. “And it’s a miracle that there hasn’t been any drama so far”, one of his colleagues confided to us, a little bitter.