French police “lost control” during nationwide protests marred by violence over the weekend, the interior minister admitted Monday, with President Emmanuel Macron calling for a security review.
Macron also refused Interior Minister Laurent Nunez’s resignation even as he acknowledged security and intelligence failures in the government response. Nationwide, more than 2,330 people were taken into police custody over the weekend, 70 percent of whom were adults, Justice Minister Gerald Darmanin said Monday.
“On Saturday, in some major cities, you couldn’t look shopkeepers in the eye after hundreds of shops had been looted and tell them we hadn’t lost control,” Nunez said. “Given the damage that has been caused, it was only right that I should hand in my resignation,” Nunez said. To end the “barricades and looting, he also requested that the interior minister promptly implement new operational methods for security forces to use on the ground in combating rioters,” the statement added.
More than 2,000 shops were expected to have been affected by the weekend’s violence across France, with damage running into “hundreds of millions of euros”, according to chamber of commerce president Alain Di Crescenzo.
