Curfews bring calm to Paris as France cracks down on weekend rioters

Paris re­turned to calm on Tues­day af­ter its first qui­et night since a week­end marred by France’s most de­struc­tive ri­ot­ing in years, as au­thor­i­ties im­posed cur­fews in sev­er­al cities in an ef­fort to pre­vent an­oth­er round of ri­ot­ing and loot­ing.

At least 2,400 peo­ple were ar­rest­ed af­ter ri­ot­ers in cities across France on Sat­ur­day clashed with po­lice, set cars on fire, stormed pub­lic build­ings and en­gulfed a his­toric city hall in flames, dur­ing na­tion­wide protests against ris­ing liv­ing costs and poor con­di­tions in schools.

On Sun­day evening, small groups set fire to trash bins, bi­cy­cles and oth­er ob­jects in the streets and loot­ed busi­ness­es in Paris, Ly­on, Mar­seille and oth­er cities.

In the cap­i­tal, a cur­few ran from 11 p.m. on Mon­day to 6 a.m. Tues­day, and a po­lice he­li­copter cir­cled over Place de la République overnight, a cen­tral point in the week­end clash­es, sweep­ing the square with a search­light to check that the or­der was be­ing re­spect­ed.

Ear­ly Tues­day morn­ing, work­ers used a crane to re­move a gi­ant flu­o­res­cent yel­low vest draped over the stat­ue at the cen­ter of the square, a ref­er­ence to the “ yel­low vest ” protests over fu­el prices that be­gan in 2018 and shook the first term of Pres­i­dent Em­manuel Macron.

Work­ers then used pres­sure wash­ers to blast graf­fi­ti off the mon­u­ment.

“The tar­get­ed cur­fews helped keep last night calm,” Prime Min­is­ter Sébastien Lecor­nu wrote on X on Tues­day, adding that new cur­fews would be im­posed that night “wher­ev­er the sit­u­a­tion re­quires,” de­cid­ed lo­cal­ly by pre­fects, the state’s rep­re­sen­ta­tives in each re­gion, to­geth­er with may­ors.

Speak­ing in Lille, north­ern France, Jus­tice Min­is­ter Gérald Dar­manin said 149 peo­ple had been jailed na­tion­wide as of Tues­day at noon. Ac­cord­ing to the Jus­tice Min­istry, of the rough­ly 2,500 peo­ple ar­rest­ed since Sat­ur­day, more than 800 have been sent be­fore pros­e­cu­tors, most of whom were ei­ther put on tri­al im­me­di­ate­ly or or­dered to ap­pear at a lat­er hear­ing.

In Paris alone, about 300 peo­ple have been sent be­fore pros­e­cu­tors fol­low­ing the Oct. 17 protests, the city pros­e­cu­tor’s of­fice said in a state­ment.

Dar­manin said he asked pros­e­cu­tors to ap­peal any sen­tence they con­sid­ered too le­nient. “Peo­ple with no crim­i­nal record end­ing up in prison for prop­er­ty crimes is ex­treme­ly rare, if not un­heard of,” he said, ar­gu­ing that the French jus­tice sys­tem will be “ex­treme­ly firm.”

In Lille, he said, three men aged 20 to 25 with no crim­i­nal record were each sen­tenced to 10 months in prison and im­pris­oned im­me­di­ate­ly for loot­ing a video game store in the city’s old town.

The Na­tion­al As­sem­bly, France’s low­er house of par­lia­ment, is launch­ing an in­quiry in­to the Oct. 17 vi­o­lence and the au­thor­i­ties’ polic­ing strat­e­gy, its speak­er, Yaël Braun-Pivet, said, with find­ings ex­pect­ed “by the end of the year.” —PARIS (AP)

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Sto­ry by TOM NOU­VIAN | As­so­ci­at­ed Press

Sylvie Cor­bet, in Paris, con­tributed to this re­port.