Nice: around a dozen shops looted and some forty arrests after the Saturday, October 17 demonstration
Translated from French. An undeclared demonstration degenerated in central Nice on Saturday, October 17: up to 3,800 people gathered, around a dozen shops looted, three municipal police vehicles damaged and around forty people taken into custody, according to the Alpes-Maritimes prefecture.
Translated from the French original. Lire en français
Central Nice tipped into violence on Saturday, October 17, on the fringes of an undeclared demonstration. According to the tally released on Saturday evening by the Alpes-Maritimes prefecture, up to 3,800 people gathered in the streets of Nice, around a dozen shops were damaged and looted, and around forty arrests were made.
The gathering had begun in the early afternoon on place Masséna, where more than a hundred people were present from 1:30 pm, ahead of a call to demonstrate at 2 pm relayed in particular by the Gilets jaunes, according to Nice-Matin’s live coverage. The crowd, made up largely of high school and university students, then moved up avenue Jean-Médecin.
Breakers in the middle of the procession
From around 2:30 pm, the window of the JD Sport shop was smashed, according to Nice-Matin. At 3:15 pm, the prefecture counted 3,500 people, including around 150 casseurs, breakers, in the Grosso and France sector, and part of the procession had reached the Promenade des Anglais, partly closed to traffic. Police intervened to put an end to damage and thefts at JD Sport, and tear gas was used.
The most hostile groups, masked and dressed in black according to the prefecture, then threw pebbles collected from the beaches at law enforcement officers on the Promenade, where the CRS arrived at around 3:50 pm. A municipal police vehicle had its windows smashed in front of the urban supervision centre on place De Gaulle. The prefect then called on demonstrators to dissociate themselves from the breakers and to disperse, judging that it was no longer a demonstration but genuine urban violence.
Around forty people in custody
Late in the day, Micromania, on avenue Jean-Médecin, and then Décathlon were looted in turn. In its evening tally, the prefecture counted around a dozen shops damaged and looted, among them a Yamaha motorcycle shop, three municipal police vehicles damaged and bus shelters vandalised. The city’s CCTV supervision centre was also targeted.
The Nice public prosecutor, Damien Martinelli, announced that around forty police custodies had been ordered, for looting, damage to public property and projectiles thrown at law enforcement. Around ten demonstrators were injured, one of them seriously, on the broken glass of a shop window he was trying to smash. The prefect said he firmly condemned these acts of violence. Dispersal began at around 5 pm on place Masséna, after further clashes at the foot of avenue Jean-Médecin.
