December 8, 2018

French security forces contained fears of a fourth weekend of rioting by extremist gilets jaunes in Paris with a change of tactics including a massive show of strength.

About 8,000 police and gendarmes refused to allow the gilets jaunes to gain the upper hand, as they had the previous week, by attempting to filter out troublemakers before they could act. They put parts of the city into lockdown before dawn and carried out widespread stop-and-search operations. Plainclothes officers pinpointed extremist elements and made hundreds of “pre-emptive arrests”.

Small groups of gilets jaunes from the extremist fringe of the grassroots movement succeeded in playing cat-and-mouse with security forces, but were repeatedly pushed back by police using water cannon, mounted officers and armoured vehicles.

Read more:

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2018/dec/08/paris-police-flood-streets-gilets-jaunes