Paris police have arrested 187 people in connection with violent clashes that followed Thursday’s demonstrations against new labour laws, the city’s police chief Pierre Mutz said on Friday.
Mutz described those behind the violence, in which 46 police officers were injured, as ”louts” and said he hoped to identify them by the end of the day.
”One hundred and eighty seven people have been arrested and are being questioned and we expect to have identified the culprits by the end of the day,” he told French broadcaster RTL.
”They are delinquents, louts, who are extremely violent, part of a radical autonomous camp that is only out to attack the police and that was determined to ensure things got out of hand,” he added.
Mutz announced on Thursday that 46 officers had been injured, of which 11 had to be hospitalised. He said 2 500 officers had been deployed on Thursday around the demonstration, but that it was ”impossible to put a police officer in front of every shop”.
Several shops were vandalised on Thursday night in the Latin quarter, near Paris’s famous Sorbonne university. Protestors vandalised cafes amid scenes that left the area veiled in tear gas fumes and a bookshop in flames.
Mutz said the victims would receive compensation, citing the case of five people arrested in possession of stolen jewellery after they broke the window of a jeweller’s shop.
The demonstrations were held in protest against proposed new labour laws aimed at encouraging companies to recruit young people. The new legislation is controversial because it would allow employers to fire young people within their first two years of their employment without having to give a reason. — AFP
