The summer soap opera on the appointments of police and gendarmerie bosses ended Thursday, October 31. The Élysée and the government agreed on the name of prefect Louis Laugier to lead the 155,000 police officers and that of General Hubert Bonneau to command the 150,000 gendarmes. Both will take office on Monday November 4.
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The postponement of these extremely strategic appointments from Council of Ministers to Council of Ministers ended up arousing sarcasm and exacerbating the war of succession around these two positions. However, this had started well before the constitution of the government of Michel Barnier.
The matter was beginning to be delicate. In addition to reflecting tensions between the Élysée and the government in this period of cohabitation, it blocked a whole series of important appointments, such as that of the boss of Ofast (Anti-Narcotics Office, dedicated to the fight against drugs ), and those of prefects.
There was a deadline, at the end of September, on which the director general of the national police (DGPN), Frédéric Veaux, and Christian Rodriguez, director general of the national gendarmerie, left their posts to retire. They had been extended in their position due to Paris Olympic and Paralympic Games.
It took one more month for the Élysée and the government to make their choice on Louis Laugier, current prefect of Isère, and General Hubert Bonneau, head of the Brittany gendarmerie.
In two separate messages posted on the social network Bruno Retailleau congratulated the two winners, praising their “ skill “. He also insisted that they had been named “ on [sa] proposal “. Upon arriving at Place Beauvau, Bruno Retailleau refused to endorse the choices of his predecessor, deciding to audition the candidates himself and to solicit others.
“ An excellent vision of the issues »
The two men were not the names chosen by the former interior minister, Gerald Darmanin. Louis Laugier, who has the particularity of having also been approached for the gendarmerie, is not a former top cop of the judicial police like his predecessor, but he knows the house well having held high positions there, notably in the human resources.
Aged 59, this native of Paris was confronted in Isère with the recent wave of murders linked to drug trafficking in Grenoble and its surrounding area. A subject that Bruno Retailleau wants to establish as “ national cause “. The Grenoble prosecutor, Éric Vaillant, said of him that he “an excellent vision of the issues “. He graduated from the Saint-Cyr military school, like General Hubert Bonneau. Both come from the same promotion, that of “General Callies”.
General Bonneau is the second former boss of the GIGN, the elite unit of the gendarmerie, to access the position of director general of the gendarmerie, after Denis Favier, an icon of this body. Hubert Bonneau’s period at the head of the GIGN, between 2014 and 2017, was marked in January 2015 by the hunt for the terrorist brothers Chérif and Saïd Kouachi, which ended in Dammartin-en-Goële where the two attackers of the newspaper satirical Charlie Hebdo were shot down.
Aged 57, he is originally from Brest. Since September 2022, he has been commander of the gendarmerie of the Brittany region, as well as of the Western defense and security zone.
Gérald Darmanin’s former chief of staff appointed prefect of Hauts-de-Seine
Appointed prefect in 2022, Alexandre Brugère, 37, who was Gérald Darmanin’s chief of staff, intended to become the boss of the police. Many did not believe in his chances of obtaining the position of DGPN, due to his proximity to Gérald Darmanin. It amounted to “name the eye of Moscow », summarized a commissioner. Alexandre Brugère was appointed Thursday, October 31, prefect of Hauts-de-Seine, which will be his first executive post as prefect.
On the gendarmerie side, the position of general director seemed to fall to General Xavier Ducept, boss of the gendarmerie in the Île-de-France region. But here too, time reshuffled the cards, and the choice of Bruno Retailleau fell on General Bonneau. After months of procrastination, the summer series in the alcoves of power has not transformed “in autumn serial “.
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