He listens, impassive behind his glasses, to the words of the presidents of the two Senate committees who wanted to hear him.
Then, he recites his argument slowly and calmly.
Heard Thursday morning by the elected officials of the Luxembourg Palace, the prefect of police Didier Lallement tried to explain the incidents around the Stade de France on the sidelines of the Champions League final between Liverpool and Real Madrid on May 28.
“A failure”, as he describes it himself, but which he tried to justify in a sometimes tense atmosphere.
He recognizes "a failure"
"I assume all of the police management of the day of Saturday May 28", he launched in the preamble, stressing that he was the "sole operational manager" of the police forces deployed around the clash between the Reds and the Spaniards.
In his introductory remarks, Didier Lallement recognized "a failure", symbolized by two points: "people have been jostled when we owe them security" and "France's image has been shaken".
But if there is a failure, the prefect of police still wanted to highlight the action “of the police or gendarmes who showed an energy that I would like to salute.
Without them, a tragedy could have happened”.
A last point already repeated several times by the Minister of the Interior, Gérald Darmanin, a week earlier before the senators.
He “may have been wrong” about the 30,000 to 40,000 people without tickets or with fakes
He is the first to have mentioned this range which is debated more than ten days later.
Didier Lallement returned to the elected officials in front of his figure of 30,000 to 40,000 people, advanced in a report signed by his hand and returned the day after the meeting, to have converged on the Stade de France without a ticket or with a forgery.
The count, taken over by the government since, “has no scientific virtue”, launches the prefect of police today.
"It's an observation by transport operators, it's not me who counts the people in the wagons", argued Didier Lallement, referring to the figure of 110,000 people to have come to Saint-Denis by different means of transport. .
“I never claimed that this figure was a few thousand perfectly accurate, explains the prefect of police, who slips to have “maybe mistaken” on the scale.
“The 30 to 40,000, we suspected them on the outskirts of our dams.
Operationally, 40,000, 30,000 or 20,000 made no difference.
Counting them is not of great importance,” he maintains.
These assertions annoyed several senators, including the elected LR of Isère, Michel Savin.
A “necessary” gassing
Images of Liverpool supporters, eyes reddened by tear gas on the forecourt of the Stade de France, have gone around the world.
And were again widely mentioned by the senators and the prefect of police, in a dialogue of the deaf.
“We had to reduce the pressure on the gates around the stadium.
We asked people to step back, nothing happened, describes Didier Lallement.
We then used tear gas, it's the only way we have to push back a crowd, except to charge it.
This second option would have been disastrous, according to the senior official.
“I am well aware that people of good faith, sometimes families, have been affected.
I am totally sorry about it, ”slips the prefect of police, who affirmed, like the Minister of the Interior, that two police officers had been sanctioned for a disproportionate use of tear gas.
“Civil servants let themselves be won over by the anger of the moment and behave in ways that are unprofessional.
But that there are two on an intervention of such a duration shows the quality of the civil servants, their efficiency and their ethics.
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“It is not satisfactory to say that there is no alternative and that we are turning the page”, gets angry the ecological senator Thomas Dossus.
But Didier Lallement remained on this position, hammering that there were no other options except the charge.
"I would do the same thing on the gas, and at the Gare de l'Est too," he said, referring to the dispersal of a crowd who wanted to get on a bus in front of this Parisian station on Saturday evening.
The Minister of the Interior asked the interministerial delegate to the Olympics, Michel Cadot, to find alternative means to the dispersion with tear gas for future major events.
Access from the RER D again mentioned
“The police can do a lot of things in this country, but they cannot push the walls.
Asked about the bottleneck in access to the Stade de France from the RER D, Didier Lallement insisted on the influx of supporters, mainly from Liverpool, blocked by the too weak pre-filtering system in this narrow lane. which runs along the A1 and passes under the A86.
A responsibility returned by him “to the organizers”.
These "10 to 15,000 people", amassed after "a late and rather massive arrival" - a point disputed by testimonies from Liverpool supporters - forced the police to break the pre-screening lock, the prefect of police fearing "a tragedy by crushing and a stampede of several thousand people".
"We could have gained a quarter of an hour to ease the pressure," admitted the senior official, just as he acknowledged that this lifting of the device could have favored the thefts and attacks committed on the forecourt.
Once the crowd let go at the gates of the stadium, the security system gradually redeployed inside the enclosure to prevent intrusions at the security gates and above the gates.
The priority then was “to prevent the invasion by thousands of people”.
"There would have been no match, 70,000 disgruntled people inside the stadium could have caused crowd movements and that would have added disorder to disorder," insisted Didier Lallement.
Unexpected massive use of counterfeit banknotes
“What was missing as fairly strategic information was the massive use of counterfeit banknotes.
You can blame me for that, it's true.
I did not expect such a volume of counterfeit banknotes", conceded the prefect of police, considering that the note national direction of the fight against hooliganism (DNLH) transmitted to the prefecture of police upstream of the meeting evoked mainly ticketless fans.
But if no one has been placed in police custody for these facts, Didier Lallement invites the injured supporters to file a complaint by directly addressing the Bobigny court, in charge of an investigation into this file;
through the forms translated into Spanish and English.
Forms criticized by the socialist senator Jean-Yves Leconte, because not specifically mentioning the possibility of violence committed by the police.
These standard forms could however be brought to evolve, announced the prefect of police.
