Former Secretary of State for the Interior and faithful to Macron, he will replace the controversial Didier Lallement, highly criticized, among other issues, for the police response to the yellow vest protests
Laurent Nuñez, former Secretary of State for the Interior and a loyal supporter of French President Emmanuel Macron, has been named the new prefect of the Paris police. Nuñez, a member of a family of ‘pied-noirs’ of Spanish origin who emigrated to Algeria during the French colonial period, has watched over the safety of the French throughout his career.
Before being appointed Prefect of Police of Paris, he was Prefect of Police of Bouches-du-Rhône (2015-2017), Secretary of State for the Interior (2018-2020) and since July 2020 he was National Coordinator for Intelligence and the Fight against Terrorism . Nuñez is “a man of experience who knows the police prefecture perfectly,” Gérald Darmanin, Minister of the Interior, wrote on Twitter after his appointment.
The new prefect of Paris police will have a tough task ahead of him, from coordinating the police response to the demonstrations planned this fall to ensuring the security of the 2024 Paris Olympics, including the fight against terrorism.
Nuñez, 58, will replace the controversial Didier Lallement, who is retiring. Lallement, 65, was appointed in March 2019 in the midst of the crisis of the yellow vests, the popular movement that, with its protests in the streets, many of them violent, put Macron’s presidency in check.
The Minister of the Interior paid tribute on Twitter to Lallement “for his action, in difficult conditions, in a context of a significant terrorist threat.”
In the three years he has been at the head of the Paris police prefecture, Lallement has been the subject of countless controversies. He has been heavily criticized for police brutality in the yellow vest protests, which left several protesters blinded by rubber bullets fired by officers.
The controversial Champions League final
In April 2020, his statements generated controversy, in the midst of the Covid-19 pandemic, stating that “those who are hospitalized, who are in the ICU, are the ones who did not respect it at the beginning of the confinement.” And he maintained a pulse with the mayor of Paris, Anne Hidalgo, for the fight in the French capital against crack trafficking.
Lallement says that he is leaving “with the pride of having fulfilled his duty”, despite the “wound of the failure of the State of France”. The former prefect was referring to his failure to manage the Champions League final last May, highly criticized in France and abroad.
The images of the chaos around the Stade de France in Saint-Denis, with robberies and attacks on the English and Spanish fans who came to watch the match, caused an international scandal, damaged France’s image as an organizer of major sporting events and ended up costing it the post to Lallement.
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