The skirmish over security in Lyon continues between the Minister of the Interior, Gérald Darmanin, and the mayor Grégory Doucet. “I was mayor and I know that as mayor you have many levers to improve the situation”writes the minister in a letter addressed to the city councilor, Monday, August 1, and consulted by France Télévisions. “Security in Lyon, and more particularly in the Guillotière district, is worrying”, emphasizes Gérald Darmanin. He appeals to “everyone’s commitment, responsibly and without dogmatism” to improve it.
Two days earlier, the minister had gone to the capital of Gaul, to inaugurate an administrative detention center (CRA) and meet police officers attacked on July 20 in the Guillotière district. Grégory Doucet then refused to meet the minister. Interior Minister Gérald Darmanin invites him, in his letter, to “join discussions to better coordinate responses” to bring to the problems of insecurity in the city.
Very severe with the mayor of Lyon, Gérald Darmanin sends him several suggestions: the number of municipal police “need to be considerably strengthened”he writes, stressing that their number even seemed to have decreased compared to 2020. The minister also mentions the installation of video protection devices, claimed “several times by the prefect”. And quote the “active deportation of CCTV images”i.e. their sharing with the police: “No one understands that Lyon is one of the only two major cities in France to refuse to provide this tool to the national police”.
“Beyond the political quarrels that no one is interested in, I think it’s time for you to renew the dialogue with the inhabitants and the police of the Republic.”
Gérald Darmanin, Minister of the Interiorletter to the mayor of Lyon Grégory Doucet
In order to “restore calm” in the Guillotière district, Gérald Darmanin also suggests that the mayor of Lyon take “anti-gathering orders, limited to specific times and days” and to assert its right of first refusal in order to promote the “commercial diversification of the district, in order to limit the proliferation of community businesses”. Finally, the Minister of the Interior denounces the project of pedestrianization of part of the district, synonymous, according to him, with a “deterioration of security with regard to the physiognomy of the district”.
This letter follows a trip by the Minister to the Guillotière district, two days earlier, where he had come to express his support for the police officers attacked on July 20. The visit had been boycotted by Grégory Doucet, the latter demanding 300 additional national police officers. The Minister of the Interior has since insisted that he “there were more than 100 policemen” in Lyon since he became minister, that 200 additional police officers from the border police arrive in January and that a new CRS brigade is permanently maintained.
The absence of Grégory Doucet had been described as “serious mistake” by the Minister, who had, however, left the door open to future discussions. The latter, whatever the case, plans to go again to the Guillotière district on September 5, in order to “an update on the evolution of the situation”.