France to post scores of new gendarmerie units to rural areas

French President Emmanuel Macron has announced plans to create 238 new gendarmerie brigades and employ more than 2,100 gendarmes by 2027, in a bid to fight crime in suburban and rural France.

Published: 2 October 2023 18:04 CEST

French President Emmanuel Macron has announced plans to set up more than 200 new gendarmerie brigades. (Photo by Bob Edme / POOL / AFP)

During a visit to Lot-et-Garonne on Monday, Macron presented a plan that he described as “historic” – to set up 238 new gendarmerie brigades between November 2023 and 2027.

These brigades, which will be staffed through the recruitment of some 2,100 gendarmes, will be concentrated on the edge of cities and in rural areas. 93 will be ‘fixed’ – or based in permanent stations – with each staffed by a dozen or so gendarmes. The remaining 145 will be ‘mobile’, staffed by six gendarmes per station.

There will be at least one new brigade in each département and overseas territory.

Macron posted a map of where these gendarmes – who unlike the police are technically part of the army – would be deployed, online. The dark blue dots represent fixed brigades, while the light blue dots represent mobile ones.

Pour renforcer la sécurité de chaque Français, nous allons doubler la présence sur le terrain de nos policiers et de nos gendarmes.

Pour la gendarmerie, ce sont 3 500 postes supplémentaires et 238 nouvelles brigades, partout en France : pic.twitter.com/CqUpBAHS19

— Emmanuel Macron (@EmmanuelMacron) October 2, 2023

The French Presidency said that the location of each new brigade was decided based on “economic, demographic and operational criteria” – the latter referring to the number of offenses recorded in each area.

The wider context

In 2022, Macron’s government has promised to recruit an additional 8,500 law enforcement officers (gendarmes and police) by the end of his second term in office. These new gendarmerie brigades will only account for about a quarter of that.

The government has also promised to double the number of law enforcement officers focused on policing the roads and public transport through to 2032; and to boost the budget of the Interior Ministry by €15 billion over five years. The government says this extra funding is necessary to deal with evolving crime risks and extra requirements engendered by the hosting of mass events like the Olympic games.

Extra law-and-order spending comes at a moment of tense relations between the police and the public in France – particularly following the killing of teenager, Nahel M, at point blank range by a police officer in June.

Member comments

Become a Member to leave a comment.

The French Jewish community, the third largest in the world, has for months been on edge in the face of a growing number of attacks and desecrations of memorials.

“National police in Rouen neutralised early this morning an armed individual who clearly wanted to set fire to the city’s synagogue,” Interior Minister Gerald Darmanin wrote on X, formerly Twitter.

Police responded at 6.45 am to reports of “fire near the synagogue”, a police source said.

A source close to the case told AFP the man “was armed with a knife and an iron bar, he approached police, who fired. The individual died”.

“It is not only the Jewish community that is affected. It is the entire city of Rouen that is bruised and in shock,” Rouen Mayor Nicolas Mayer-Rossignol wrote on X.

He made clear there were no other victims other than the attacker.

Two separate investigations have been opened, one into the fire at the synagogue and another into the circumstances of the death of the individual killed by the police, Rouen prosecutors said.

Such an investigation by France’s police inspectorate general is automatic whenever an individual is killed by the police.

The man threatened a police officer with a knife and the latter used his service weapon, said the Rouen prosecutor.

The dead man was not immediately identified, a police source said.

Asked by AFP, the National Anti-Terrorism Prosecutor’s Office said that it is currently assessing whether it will take up the case.

France has the largest Jewish community of any country after Israel and the United States, as well as Europe’s largest Muslim community.

There have been tensions in France in the wake of the October 7th attack by Palestinian militant group Hamas on Israel, followed by the Israeli bombardment of the Gaza Strip.

Red hand graffiti was painted onto France’s Holocaust Memorial earlier this week, prompted anger including from President Emmanuel Macron who condemned “odious anti-Semitism”.

“Attempting to burn a synagogue is an attempt to intimidate all Jews. Once again, there is an attempt to impose a climate of terror on the Jews of our country. Combating anti-Semitism means defending the Republic,” Yonathan Arfi, the president of the Representative Council of Jewish Institutions of France (CRIF). wrote on X.

France was hit from 2015 by a spate of Islamist attacks that also hit Jewish targets. There have been isolated attacks in recent months and France’s security alert remains at its highest level.