At 80, France’s notorious riot police, the CRS, remain unloved

It was a fleeting moment. A rare sign of empathy. On January 11, 2015, after the terrorist attack on Charlie Hebdoa teacher from the northern French city of Arras, wearing a hat, pulled away from the body of the republican march that had been organized that day, to go and hug a CRS officer, a sturdy 32-year-old who hailed from the French overseas department of Martinique. It was a moment of communion and gratitude. The crowd applauded the police vans that had been sent to secure the march.

Then, it was back to business as usual: “If you’re proud to be a CRS, hit your colleague,” shouted protestors who marched against the 2023 pension reform. Eighty years after their units were created, the 13,520 or so members of the Republican Security Companies (CRS) remain France’s least popular police officers, the ones no TV series has dared to feature.

To understand the roots of this disenchantment, you have to go back to the start. On December 8, 1944, six months after D-Day, Charles de Gaulle and the provisional government’s interior minister, Adrien Tixier, decided to disband the Reserve Mobile Groups (GMR) and replace them, that same day, with the CRS. Indeed, the GMR units, created by the Vichy government in 1941, had acquired a disreputable image as the auxiliaries of the occupying forces. In particular, they had cracked down on the Bergerac maquis, in the Massif Central range, and sealed off the alpine Vercors area while German troops hunted down Resistance fighters.

You have 87.78% of this article left to read. The rest is for subscribers only.