for Paris 2024, RATP is recruiting security agents

The company wants to hire 120 additional agents in order to strengthen security in Ile-de-France transport. franceinfo followed a patrol which has just integrated new recruits.

“Security guards needed for the Olympics”, the RATP announcement could say. The company wants to recruit 120 agents this year for its internal police force, the Network Protection and Security Group (GPSR), or almost 10% of the total workforce. Not to mention the 40 recruitments that it will carry out internally via retraining, of bus drivers, counter agents or controllers. Before the Paris Olympics, the RATP announces that it wants to recruit more than 5,000 people, all professions combined, to improve its service.

A discreet place with an anonymous facade, near a station on metro line 13 in Seine-Saint-Denis, this is where one of the GPSR units is installed. There is a restaurant area, a fully equipped gym and an armory. 200 agents are attached to it, operating in the western sector of Île-de-France. Among them, new recruits like Mégane, attracted by the prospect of the Olympic Games: “I worked in commerce just before the RATP and before that I was a volunteer and military firefighter in the Army.”

It’s a real pride to be able to participate in these Olympics, to be able to be on the ground on the front line. I have no apprehensions. I’m actually really looking forward to being able to be there.”

Mégane, GPSR agent

at franceinfo

The RATP hopes to be able to attract, like Mégane, motivated candidates. There is no standard profile required, but very demanding training lasting a little over four months. With, in the end, only one recruitment on average out of 70 files submitted, according to Didier Robidoux, the director of security.

100 teams will patrol this summer

GPSR agents are sworn in and can therefore search luggage or issue fines. Their equipment includes a semi-automatic pistol. Nicolas, team leader, comes to collect it from Ludovic, in the base’s armory, ultra-secure with access badge. He takes two magazines and loads his weapon.

The teams are made up of three officers who patrol the metro. The essential part of their mission consists of reassuring travelers through a visible presence, which does not exclude more forceful interventions, specifies another Nicolas, who has five years of seniority within the GPSR: “The metro also concentrates all the problems that there may be in society. And in a big city, there may be gun carrying, there may be certain problems. Afterwards, it’s not necessarily which will take up 90% of our time.”

Like his colleagues, Nicolas will be working during the Olympic Games. In total, around a hundred GPSR teams will patrol daily over the period, around twenty more than a usual summer.