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My Delicate Neighborhood Mystery
The photo to the right is just a stock “French military guards something in Paris” photo. I didn’t take it. It’s just so you can visualize what I’m talking about.
I went out to buy some bread this morning and noticed that both the cops and the military seemed to be patrolling my neighborhood in larger numbers than usual and in an unusual way. They’re not an unfamiliar sight. Not at all. You see them all over the city. But three of the military guys were on a small street parallel to mine, where I’ve never seen them before, guarding a building I’d never seen them watching before. It’s not a place that I know to be a terrorist target of any kind. (And I still don’t; but obviously, it’s a more interesting building to someone than I’d realized.)
“Bonjour,” I said to them, “Has something abnormal happened?”
These guys look so young to my eyes. See the guy in the photo? That’s how young they all look. Like someone’s kid. The police here tend to look streetwise, cynical, and knowing. The military guys? They look too young and inexperienced. To my eyes, anyway. They nodded politely. “Not abnormal, no,” said one after reflecting for a moment. “Just sensible.”
Sensible means “sensitive.” You could also translate it as delicate.
He wasn’t at all brusque, but I didn’t feel he was encouraging me to ask more questions. Something told me it wasn’t the kind of story where you get very far just by asking. So I wished them the best of luck, walked down to the bakery, bought my bread, and came back home.
Then I thought, “Why would you put them there if you were trying to keep a secret? That’s the last thing I’d want outside that building if I were trying to be discreet, isn’t it?”
I checked the local news: no clues.
I wonder what it was?
Published in Culture, General
It’s the HQ for “Operation Keep an Eye on the Crazy American Woman.”
As a current tourist in Paris, I noticed their dispersed presence throughout the neighborhoods I have walked through. There are a couple of the young protectors right outside my hotel by what appears to be a Jewish daycare center. I assumed that they were principally acting as an obvious deterrent to attacks on some of these soft targets.
Welcome to Paris! Yes, they’re usually outside places like that. I’ve never seen them before on the street I saw them, or in front of that building. Security where it usually is gets no raised eyebrows from me. Start moving them to a place I’ve never seen it … well, one raised eyebrow.
They’re there in principle, as you say, to be an “obvious deterrent to attacks on soft targets,” but I worry that in practice they function as “a map to the soft targets.”
“Monsieur, we suspect she’s trying to lull us into zee complacency by doing nothing but check zee Ricochet all day long.”
Maybe some politician was “visiting” someone.
I had exactly the same thought, and then I thought, “But wouldn’t he want to be discreet?”
How odd. Citizens in the US would be shocked to see army soldiers patrolling the streets of any US city, even Washington DC. You occasionally see some in a major airport around the big holidays.
When I was in China, the only time I saw soldiers was at war memorials or in front of embassies.
Ms. Berlinski, do you see soldiers patrolling in cities other than Paris?
Not recently, but I haven’t left Paris recently. They do, certainly. I’m not at all shocked to see them in Paris; they’ve always been here and they’ve been here in larger numbers (on many days) since the Charlie Hebdo attacks. But I was surprised to find them on the little street next to mine. I wouldn’t have been at all surprised to find them on lots of other streets near me, but I know what all the places they usually protect are.
David, you will find armed, uniformed men all over Mexico City, especially at entrances to banks and major corporate offices.
They all are someone’s kid. That’s one reason it’s so infuriating when some politician uses them for set dressing for a speech (maybe not in France, here it’s a favorite theme of Obama’s).
That is true of a lot of “third world” places. In many Caribbean countries there are private security(not soldiers) in front of most stores and banks.
I find the deployment of soldiers in major cities in Europe a striking development. I know we had a bit of it after 9/11, but it faded quickly. I’ll be interested to see if this becomes a more permanent fixture in those places.
I don’t know if they’re Army or special police units, but you see a lot of armed men on duty in different places in India: outside Parliament, five star hotels, high profile/high risk religious sites, politicians’ houses, airports, railway stations, the Delhi Metro (where they run the security checks).
Malls and some hotels also have their own security which check under cars for bombs before you can park them or pat you down after you go through metal detectors.
I know, of course they are. There’s something about the soldiers who patrol Paris that’s really baby-faced, though, compared to the gendarmes or the National Police (which used to be called the called the Sûreté — if you’ve ever read an old-fashioned Paris policier novel, you’ll recognize that name).
We all reckon the new soldiers are here for security theater, not because they’re really the best strategy for protecting these targets. (Or perhaps they are; I’m not going to pretend I fully understand what they’re thinking, but I can say, subjectively, that when I see the Police Nationale, I think, “I would not want to mess with them and I’m glad they’re here to protect me.” When I see the kids from the army, I think, “They’re here to make me feel protected, but I’m worried they’d in fact be useless or worse in an emergency.” It’s just something they project, or fail to project.)
You’ve found where Ms. Trierweiler’s replacement lives.
Have some security measures in French cities been increased because of the intifada in Jerusalem? Does that plague of violence in Israel inflame situations in Western nations?
It’s not totally out of the question that it’s something like that. Hollande took a lot of flack for not having appropriate security during his assignations with her.
In the past, it has, but not so far here. There are many reasons, off the top of my head, for there to be very high security in Paris right now. The bombing in Ankara, for example, has immediate security repercussions for a city with a large number of Turks and Kurds. And there’s always something going on diplomatically that needs protecting here — as in Washington. The mystery from this morning was seeing them on a side-street where I don’t usually see them, obviously protecting a building that I’d had no idea contained anything of high security value.
Big cities always have their mysteries.
I have also seen convoys of police several of times in Paris. With sirens, motorcycle escorts and vans full of gendarmes.
Is Jason Bourne in town?
I saw a group of soldiers some time ago here in FL in the bookstore – they were laughing at the headlines on some of the magazines – they looked about 20…barely – that really hit me – so young and they were in full fatigues, scrub faced, pink cheeked and full of life. I could not help but think, I wonder where they are being sent and I wish it were home. Claire, I hope you take extra precautions and my guess is they are very well trained and there for a good reason. Might be a good idea to stock up today – just sayin’.
They’ll mess up the traffic like that for any old visiting dignitary. If it was the past few days, you might have seen them protecting some of these people.
They’ve been in Paris at least since I was a kid. Definitely security has been pushed up in the past year, but it was pushed way up in 1995, too.
Are you receiving any of the influx of refugees to your area? Maybe there are preparations going on to move some of them to the surrounding neighborhoods.
Tons of refugees in Paris, but they don’t come accompanied by the military — definitely not.
Americans just aren’t accustomed to troops on the streets unless it’s in a post-disaster situation. I remember studying the Civil War in school and how, to secure the presidency, Rutherford Hayes agreed to remove federal troops from southern states and the words Posse Comitatus entered my vocabulary.
European sensibilities are different. They’re just relieved to find out the soldiers are theirs.
Hi Claire.
I take it you have Googled the address. Residential or Commercial?
It’s an apartment building, but there could be both in it — it’s not clear from the outside what happens behind the front door. (I was curious enough to go back and look again when I went out for lunch … nothing happening there now. And the cop-per-block ratio is back to normal.)
Claire, you have a tendency to overestimate the capability and bravery of the Bad Guys. Soldiers ARE effective deterrents – even incompetent soldiers. The kind of person who wants to kill someone always prefers to do it where they stand a chance of walking away – which is why shooters in the US strongly prefer gun-free zones.
On a tour of the DC area with my son’s 5th grade class (wow, that was 5 years ago!) we were looking for a lunch spot in Arlington when I saw some men in dark suits and shades; three in front on a fine dining establishment, and two across the street. I’m sure they were trying to be discreet, but they stuck out like a sore thumb. So we hung around for a while, and sure enough, Leon Panetta (CIA Director at the time) came out, walked down street and got in a dark Suburban.
I’m sure diplomats try to be discreet, but the security apparatus that protects them is just too obvious.
I have personal knowledge of a terror attack that was averted by the presence of a single man in a parking lot trying to look tough.
Probably. But if I offered you three very obvious, attention-getting soldiers to stand outside your home — but only for 100, randomly-chosen days of the year — would you take it? Would it make you feel less or more secure on the other 265 days of the year to know that the world has been alerted to the location of your home and the temptingness of the target in it?