Paris: City of Illusion
I've rewritten this article about five times now. It's late. There are no links. It's not what most people would consider 'light entertainment'. But the journalist side of me wants to be responsible. So let's talk about personal safety in Paris.
False Sense of Security I'll bet all of you have heard how safe Paris is. How you never hear about shootings and stabbings and muggings in the daily news like back home. And thank goodness they aren't allowed to have guns here. And we'll avoid Les Halles after dark because Frommer's says so. Now I'm going to rain on your parade. It isn't Harlem, but Paris is no picnic, either. Parisians know there is crime, but no one likes to talk about it, as unpleasant a subject that it is. You'll be hardpressed to find anything in the French news. But you'll rarely find anything in the Anglophone publications either. I know. I've looked, and all I ever find is 'watch out for pickpockets.'
Sounds Unbelievable? I don't want to sound like a party pooper, but Paris is getting more and more dangerous every day, and it's not just the graffiti and the hoards of young thugs in tracksuits you see everywhere that give this away. Actual statistics of rising crime have appeared in my neighborhood's local newspaper (arrives free in our mailbox, most people chuck 'em in the bin with the pizza adverts). Mr. Hall and I live just next to the Pompidou Center, between the Marais and Les Halles. It's not considered a dangerous area until you cross over Blvd. du Strasbourg onto the Rue St. Denis, so I was not too thrilled to know that crime in the area had risen almost 30% in 1999. I searched the web to find more statistics, stories, warnings, etc. The only site that I found happened to be in English, the Tocqueville Connection. Among the stories of the typical riotous violence that we all hear about during big sporting events and student marches, there were reports from the Paris Police Chief Philippe Massoni :
"...violent crime is on the rise, with more and more incidents of assault and battery," he said. "Youth gangs and urban unrest are increasing...anti-police violence in certain areas is becoming critical." According to another article, violence in the schools has worsened (115,660 acts of violence in northern suburban schools the first three months of 1998, of which 115 involved firearms, and 1,084 knives or razors), and the students who are kicked out turn their violence onto those in the streets and on public transportation. We've heard it often that some of the suburbs of Paris are very dangerous, but that the city itself is pretty safe. Think of how illogical this is. The gangs of disgruntled youth from the suburbs can ride the metro cars into town just like everyone else (the prolific tagging of the metro cars can attest to this). We can read all sorts of reasons for the growing unrest: high unemployment, racism, anti-immigrant sentiment, harassment by the police, etc. But that's all politics and society, and it's not going to protect you on the street to know why you, an Anglophone resident or tourist, have become a target.
Latest Articles