French law enforcement carried out 45,400 checks during the New Year and imposed 6,650 fines for not respecting the night curfew imposed to try to slow the advance of the coronavirus, on a night marked by the celebration of several clandestine parties, one of them with about 2,500 guests in Brittany.
Interior Minister Gerald Darmanin detailed the figures for the day in a statement today and stressed that the curfew was respected in particular in Paris, a city that often stars in rallies and riots.
The controversy focused on this occasion on a “radish” in Brittany (west) that gathered about 2,500 people, according to the prefecture, and which was further prolonged today by the inability of the police to put end to the meeting.
The party took place in an industrial building in the town of Lieuron, about 45 kilometers south of Rennes, where gendarmes who tried to avoid the rally were attacked with objects thrown at them, to the point that a vehicle of the gendarmerie was set on fire.
In order not to put participants at risk and prevent a stampede, by mid-afternoon on Friday the party had not yet been dissolved, according to BFM TV, it could only be cordoned off to prevent new participants from joining. .
Other clandestine parties with several hundred people were evicted in Marseille and Chelles, on the outskirts of Paris.
To avoid congestion, the government had launched a device with more than 100,000 police and gendarmes across the country, which is trying to prevent the rise of a third wave of the coronavirus.
Darmanin stressed in the note that although the incidents have been “less serious” than in previous years, some individuals violently attacked the police, resulting in 662 arrests and 25 wounded among the ranks of the police forces. ‘order.