Life with Didier Lallement is strange. As the official responsible for running the policing system in the French capital, he is not very keen on you turning up at a demonstration. But once you get there, he often won’t let you leave.
Anniversary rally
The worst of these occasions was on Saturday 16 November 2019, on the anniversary of the first demonstration called by what became “les Gilets jaunes”. After long negotiations, the organisers of this intended birthday party got Lallement’s agreement that they could assemble in the Place d’Italie toward the south east of the centre of Paris and then march off for a demonstration in streets away from the centre of the city.
Instead of a march, thousands of demonstrators were kettled and, on the excuse of random destruction by a handful of hooligans, they were then subjected to the full panoply of French police weaponry covering the spectrum from an officer’s carefully aimed boot to tear gas grenades by the hundreds via a savage use of truncheons (the modern kind that spin on a handle, jab and strike) and generous doses of “grenades de désencerclement”.
