Gendarmerie Attacked, Brice Spectacularly Optimistic

Just hours after the incidents in Grenoble, the following events occurred at the gendarmerie of Saint-Aignan in the department of Loir-et-Cher. This report is from LCI.TF1:

At first the prefecture of Loir-et-Cher had said that one hundred gendarmes were called in, but in the end, there were almost three hundred deployed Sunday night (July 18) at Saint-Aignan. The gendarmerie had been attacked that morning by gypsies protesting the killing by a gendarme of one of their members. According to a communiqué from the prefecture, the gendarmes will ensure the safety and the control of the zone, and will oppose any recurrence of violence.

The town of Saint-Aignan, 3,400 inhabitants, was awakened Sunday morning by a rare confrontation between gendarmes and gypsies. "About fifty people, some wearing hoods and armed with axes and bludgeons, attacked the headquarters of the highway patrol and the toll booths at Saint-Romain," explained the prefecture. "Then they went to Saint-Aignan where they committed more acts of vandalism, breaking windows, destroying shops, billboards, traffic lights, cutting down trees, and setting fire to two cars," the prefecture added, confirming the description given by the mayor of the town.

It was the death of a man late Friday night (July 16-17), killed by a gendarme at Thésée (Loir-et-Cher), during a police chase, that provoked the anger of the gypsy community.

There is more information at Le Parisien:

Five days after the death of Luigi Duquenet, the young gypsy killed by a gendarme, and the violence that ensued, four persons have been placed in custody. (...) About seventy gendarmes were mobilized to find and arrest the alleged perpetrators of the violence committed on Sunday morning in the village of Saint-Aignan. Four suspects are being held in Blois, one for making death threats to the gendarmes, the others for destroying property. (...)

The prosecutor of Blois, Dominique Puechmaille is opening two separate inquiries. The first will determine the circumstances in which the gendarme opened fire and killed the young man, 22. The second will follow the trail of the young man before his death, the "gang robbery" of 20 euros at an ATM machine, which caused the gendarmes to intervene, the refusal to "comply" and above all the "attempted homicide of three gendarmes". "The car deliberately drove towards the gendarmes who had to get out of its way and let it pass," affirmed the prosecutor.

Nicolas Sarkozy has been called a racist for making certain remarks about the behavior of gypsies:

In response to the events in Saint-Aignan, Nicolas Sarkozy announced on Wednesday that he was calling a meeting at Elysée Palace next week in order to examine the situation of the gypsies and the Roms throughout France and to decide whether or not to "expel all illegal settlements."

His statements aroused the anger of human rights organizations and associations of gypsies, all of whom accused him of stigmatizing the gypsies and of trying to deflect attention from the Bettancourt-Woerth scandal.

Note: You can read about this corruption scandal at the NYT, or any one of a number of English-language sites. Do a Google on "Bettencourt scandal in France." The Times article whets one's appetite with these opening lines:

"An aging heiress. An angry daughter. A society photographer. A renegade butler and an embittered accountant. Secret tapes. A famous company with a nasty past and long political connections. An unpopular president and a cabinet minister with a taste for money, and tales of illegal cash donations in envelopes. This romantic stew is known as the “Bettencourt affair,” after the elderly heiress of the L’Oréal fortune, Liliane Bettencourt, 87."

Back to Le Parisien:

Sarkozy also proclaimed his desire to "wage" a "veritable war" on criminality, in response to the urban violence in Grenoble, while the Left pointed to the "patent failure" of his policy on crime, both as president and as interior minister.

The League of Human Rights (LDH) accused the president of making the Roms and gypsies into scape goats and of turning public opinion against easy targets. Coralie Guillot, of the Parada Association, that works with the Roms of Seine-Saint-Denis, claims that the decisions have already been made, and cites the numerous expulsions from the department of Ile-de-France. Olivier Peyroux of the Hors la rue Association, that deals with nomadic youth, accused Sarkozy of associating Roms and gypsies with criminality.

As usual, Brice Hortefeux arrived on the scene the next day. Both Le Post and François Desouche have published an audio track of the remarks he made at Saint-Aignan, but I cannot get it to work for me. Here is what he is supposed to have said:

"We have recorded spectacular results in the fight against crime. All indicators of the fight against crime are going down. A year ago, crime was rising slightly, today it is clearly going down. This is true for attacks against personal belongings, for burglaries, and for the fight against trafficking and drugs. As for attacks against people, which was the trouble spot, we have broken the upward spiral."

"This is only a start, we will persevere methodically, with determination and obstinacy. And the only mission that the President of the Republic has confided (to me) is plain and clear - to ensure the protection of our citizens."

According to Causeur, he may have been advised to modify his language, since on July 21, on Europe 1 Radio, he declared:

"In the fight that we are waging to ensure public safety, we obtain results that are sometimes spectacular. We observe a decrease in the number of thefts, burglaries, scams..."

Here is an eyewitness (well, almost) account of the incident from a lucky American expat living in the Loire Valley.

Some readers at Bivouac-Id reproach Sarkozy for his 'tough cop" position in this case. Their feeling is that he should not expend energy expelling Roms, who do not constitute a major threat to France, but rather deal with the Muslims, who do. This is a valid complaint, and completely in keeping with Sarkozy's hollow braggadocio. He has been known to expel a few Chinese girls who were out of line in some way, a few Afghans, etc... But never to expel, en masse, the Muslim invaders - for obvious reasons - he's the one who let them in in the first place!

The painting below by Van Gogh, A Gypsy Camp near Arles (1888), though not directly related to the post, was too good to pass up. The painting resides in the Orsay Museum in Paris.