They were ready for trouble !




These are the vans of the riot police, the CRS, parked outside the student centre.



There was a demonstration against Le Grand Contournement - a new road planned to pass through the Medoc for the heavy lorries going from Spain to Holland etc. to bypass Bordeaux. It started at 2pm and disrupted the trams. (Thankfully Pat had taken me to the stop at Bougnard otherwise I'd have been sat on an immobile tram, too!)


They had their riot-shields and everything!

(Telephone pictures, I'm afraid)

Comments

Anonymous said…
Some years ago we visited Marmande as a family and the police were out in force there too. It appears that the farmers were protesting about the poor price of tomatoes, (it was Marmande after all!) and the CRS were brandishing, not shields but sub machine guns! If they say move on, you tend to move on.

(As an aside, I had used to think that the CRS were gendarmes but appears that they're not, they are Police Nationale. You learn a little something useless every day don't you?)
10:32 pm
Emmanuel said…
There is a riot unit of the Gendarmes. They are called Gendarmes mobiles. Maybe because they tend to be moved around. You'll notice that there are 2 police forces in France: Police nationale and Gendarmerie. One obeys to the ministére de l'intérieur, the other one depends of the army.
5:50 pm
Alan said…
Yes. Today M. Sarkozy finished as France's 'top flic' to concentrate on his presidential candidature.

There's also la police municipale, who answer to the mairie.
5:54 pm
Alan said…
Incidentally you will have noticed that the police is a girl (la police) The army is also a girl. There is no navy or air force, instead there is the marine army and the army of the air. All are girls. The French football team is also a girl. In fact, as far as I know all teams are girls.
9:18 pm
Anonymous said…
And what do they play in... blouses?

Actually, my French son-in-law's father is a retired gendarme, from the marine division. That's today's bit of thoroughly useless information! As I said yesterday, you learn something useless every day........
9:34 pm
Anonymous said…
Just as a little aside, before this post eventually drops off the end of the page, it appears that there had generally used to be bad feeling between the Gendarmes and Police Nationale as the former had to live, with their families if they were married, in barracks, while the P.N. were allowed to buy and occupy their own homes. The individual gendarmes were allowed to buy a house but not occupy it on days when they were working. I don't know if that's still the case. Another little bit of useless information, I was told that the Police Nationale were much harder on prosecuting and thus less likely to let you off than the Gendarmes. Wow! That makes them a pretty uncharitable lot. (Can't you just tell who got nicked by the Gendarmerie? No, don't ask! However, talk about unprofessional. I'd better finish now, or my next visit to L.B.F. could be even more fraught with perils.)
11:26 pm
Alan said…
I read something in a car magazine the other day that talked about just this very thing - that the police municipale nick most people, followed by the police nationale, then the gendarmes.

But they also explained that since most of the nicking is for dodgy parking and minor traffic violations then that all makes sense.
6:31 am
Anonymous said…
Yes, I wrote of the gendarmes being unprofessional but that is not altogether true. When a local reported a suspiscious van in the village square not too far from Castillonnes, (near your neck of the woods),they were there like a shot and turned the whole van over (metaphorically speaking) in double quick time then sent him on his way. I wish that we could have that level of confidence over here! (Like having to dial 999 three times when your garage has JUST been burgled. And at that time I was still a serving police officer! The next time it got burgled, they caught the fellow who had stolen the pickup used in the burglary but obviously didn't bother to put my crime to him 'cos it was never cleared up.)

Added to that, the chap who murdered Anna Humphreys from Penley was caught by the gendarmerie near Lyon and they quickly confirmed his identity, and that he was wanted, with an in-car computer at a time when we didn't even have in-station computers!
11:15 pm
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