How the Summer Olympics Turned Paris Into a Security Fortress

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How the Summer Olympics Turned Paris Into a Security Fortress

Helicopters whirling overhead. Police demanding a QR code and proof of identity to pass. Metal fences barricading the streets. And an army brigade, marching by in formation, machine guns hoisted to their chests.

This is what it has been like getting to the front door of my apartment building for the past few evenings.

It’s a weird moment in Paris, on the eve of the Olympic Games and its unusual opening ceremony. The heart of the city has been transformed into a fortress, with metal barricades and checkpoints, subway stations shuttered, 45,000 police officers — about 10 times more than normal — on top of 10,000 soldiers, search dogs, ***** squads and tactical teams, including in helicopters.

The Seine’s banks and bridges, normally teeming with humanity, are suddenly empty. A strange, exquisite calm has descended.

The reason: After all its hand-wringing over a Plan B, Paris is proceeding with its risky and wonderful plan to float the opening ceremony — with the world’s best athletes — down the Seine, through the center of the ancient city and before more than 400,000 spectators packed into stands and leaning out of windows.

Even if Paris weren’t scarred by ********** attacks, protecting all those people forms an obvious — and heavy — security challenge.

Officials warned us for months of their plans: On July 18, eight days before the opening ceremony, they set up a security zone on both sides of the river, putting up some 44,000 metal fences and manning each corner with police. Anyone who wanted to get inside the so-called gray zone needed to apply to the police for a QR code and then produce it on request — whether it was to go home, get to work or make a restaurant date. Some 200,000 people applied and were screened.

At the same time, the police entered some 500 buildings inside the secured area, examining stairwells and basement caves, interior ministry officials said. They’ve searched the sewers, sealed thousands of manhole covers and scoured through the city’s underground network of catacombs.

And police imposed what amounts to house arrest on 155 people who were considered to be potential threats.

As the start of the ceremony on Friday evening approaches, the security will get even more intense. The restricted zone will expand. More subway stations will close. Police officers will up take positions on rooftops, and the airspace over and around Paris for 93 miles will be closed, with all four nearby airports shuttered, including Charles de Gaulle, Europe’s third-largest.

This unusually heavy blanket has irritated some locals, particularly business owners, and bewildered many tourists trying to understand the directions proffered in broken English by police officers.

“We just wanted to go to Notre-Dame and now … what is this?” said Darius Emadi, 38, an ********* professional clown who just moved to Paris and was clueless about the closures and codes as he stewed, stuck behind a checkpoint near City Hall.

“I’m never going to make it to my doctor’s appointment!” complained a woman stopped near the silver Bir-Hakeim Bridge.

The heightened security has also infringed on human rights, according to some lawyers contesting the house arrest orders.

“These administrative orders ******** lives; they amount to social deaths for people who are not even identified as a threat by the police,” said one lawyer, Samy Djemaoun. “It’s not a case-by-case approach. It’s an across-the-board one.”

Terrorism was the reason the Paris mayor agreed to lobby for the Olympics in the first place, and why organizers pushed for such an atypical, exposed opening ceremony. It would be a sign of hope and freedom for a wounded city, after two attacks by Islamist extremists ******* nearly 150 and wounded more than 400 people in 2015. Since then, the country has endured dozens more attacks — the latest in December, when a man with a ****** and hammer ******* a tourist and injured three others near the Eiffel Tower.

“I totally agree with all the security measures they put in place because you never know,” said Clarissa Jimenez, 25, stepping out of the hair salon in the Passy neighborhood where she works.

“In the beginning, I found it all kind of scary,” she said, “but now I feel safe.”

The police and French security services dragnet has yielded some results. In central France, a man of Chechen origin was charged in the planning of an ******* outside an Olympic soccer match. Another man, a neo-***** sympathizer living in the Alsace region,

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for publishing an explosives recipe online and for making threats. This week, a 40-year-old Russian man was charged with working at the behest of a foreign power to “provoke hostilities” in France intending to destabilize the Olympic Games.

Police checks have vetted about a million people involved in the Games, including security guards, stadium workers and volunteers. Of those, about 5,000 were rejected because of their ********* records, the authorities said, or because they had been flagged for “radicalization.”

But 5,000 out of one million was a low number, the interior minister, Gérald Darmanin, said during his media tour of reassurance this week.

“We are very confident, but obviously very, very focused,” Mr. Darmanin said. “We have perceived no clear threat targeting the Olympic Games — neither the French intelligence services, nor the services of foreign services helping us.”

Security experts say that given the police density and preparation, the risk of a major ********** ******* on the ceremony is very low. A greater concern is an isolated person with a ****** outside the security zone, said Guillaume Farde, a security expert who teaches at Sciences Po in Paris.

“Even if the reaction time with that density of police in Paris is in the order of dozens of seconds, in dozens of seconds you can make a victim,” he said. “That’s very, very hard to control or anticipate.”

To guard against that possibility, police have poured into the city from across the country. They received

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this week to be thorough and professional, but also friendly: “the most beautiful face of France.” He echoed General Dwight D. Eisenhower’s famous message to ********* soldiers on the eve of the D-Day landings, 80 years ago: “The eyes of the world will be fixed on you. Your job will not be easy.”

Many Parisians have noticed the change in tone.

“The police officers are charming,” Florence Bellamy said as she walked through the desolate protected zone one morning with her QR code. Last Monday was her 71st birthday and she said she felt as if the Olympics had emptied out the city center, and was offering it up to her as a present.

She wandered across the Seine and visited old haunts, stopping at Café de Flore, where Jean-Paul Sartre and Simone de Beauvoir once hung out, for a café crème.

“I had the feeling that all of Paris belonged to me,” said Ms. Bellamy, a writer and French teacher, “and I would never see it like this again.”

The day after the ceremony, if everything goes smoothly, most of the fences and checkpoints are scheduled to come down. No more QR codes. One third of the police officers will leave. The ones who remain will spread out across the city and suburbs. And the Olympic Games will begin in earnest.

“All this will be quickly forgotten,” Mayor Anne Hidalgo said during a welcome ********* at City Hall this week. “After the ceremony, when they pull down all the fences and people can see all the beautiful spaces, there will be joy.”

Ségolène Le Stradic contributed reporting.

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