Municipal police should be disarmed in the multicultural Saint-Denis suburb of Paris, the city’s recently elected radical Mayor Bally Bagayoko said this week, despite the history of violence and unrest in the area.
The Malian-heritage mayor, who swept to power on the far-left Jean-Luc Mélenchon La France Insoumise (LFI/France in Rebellion) ticket — with the backing of the French Communist Party — earlier this month, defeating comparatively moderate Socialist Party candidate Mathieu Hanotin during the first round of voting in France’s two-round municipal elections.
True to form, Bagayoko, who campaigned on giving free (taxpayer-funded) bicycles to every ninth-grade student in the city, free “back-to-school” kits to all children, among other handouts, came out swinging for the far-left fences in his first week as mayor, vowing to take away weapons from municipal police in Saint-Denis.
The Rebellious mayor said per Le Figaro: “I recently met with all the municipal police officers to express my gratitude. We are going to begin a disarmament process.”
The politician said he was specifically focused on removing the LBD [less-lethal defence] weapons, such as tasers, from the municipal police, and that “for the time being” the force will be able to keep its firearms.
The move by Bagayoko to take away weapons has sparked pushback from the Professional Union of Municipal Police Officers, who urged their members to seek transfers from municipalities seeking to disarm them. The Municipal Police Defence Union (SDPM) was even more blunt, imploring officers to “flee LFI-controlled municipalities.”
Mocking the chaos sparked by the France Insoumise mayor’s announcement, recently elected Mayor of Nice, Eric Ciotti, quipped: “The Nice municipal police need reinforcements. We will be proud to welcome the Saint-Denis officers threatened by the irresponsible disarmament decision made by the LFI-run town hall.”
The position of disarming police is widely unpopular across France, with a recent CSA poll conducted for the Journal du Dimanche finding that nearly seven in ten (69 per cent) support keeping officers armed. However, it is unclear if the residents of Saint-Denis would feel the same, given the commune’s ethnically diverse population’s frequent violent confrontations with police in riots stretching back decades, including those in 2023 in the wake of the police shooting of Algerian-heritage Nahel Merzouk after he rammed his car into officers.
Mayor Bagayoko has pitched himself as a representative of the “New France” of migrants and their descendants — compared to the “White France” derided as “ugly” by his far-left party leader Mélenchon. Bagayoko said that Saint-Denis and its diverse population represent “everything that the far-right hates.”
The song “We are all children of Gaza” was played during his victory party last week, during which he told supporters: “I am mayor of Saint-Denis and Pierrefitte, but at the head of a humanist city, with 150 nationalities of different origins from 5 continents, what happens in the world has a particular resonance in the streets of Saint-Denis”.
However, despite his supposed message of unity and solidarity, broadcaster BFMTV noted that his election campaign in Saint-Denis was “exceptionally violent”, allegedly including the “systematic” tearing down of opposition posters, death threats, and the use of drug traffickers on the campaign trail.
Meanwhile, Bagayoko’s first week in office was marred by the sensational resignation of Saint-Denis Socialist Party council member Oriane Filhol, over the alleged links between the mayor and Mouloud Bezzouh, who was convicted of hiring three young men to carry out an attack against her.
Following Bezzouh’s conviction on Tuesday, the 34-year-old Filhol tearfully stated outside the courthouse that she “did not feel safe on the city council, knowing precisely the relationship between the new mayor and the man who ordered my attack.”
Bagayoko, who was reportedly photographed in conversation with Bezzouh on the steps of town hall, has claimed he does not “personally” know Bezzouh, saying that he only had “purely public relations” with the convict.
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