Alarm Wails Over Smashed Optician’s Window as Looting Reaches Paris’s Marais

A shattered shop window, scattered boxes and a blaring alarm were all that remained on Rue Beaubourg in the city’s Marais district late on Sunday, October 18, after looters struck an optician’s store near the Pompidou Centre on a second night of unrest in the French capital.

Local videographer Evans filmed the scene at about 11:30 p.m. The footage shows the store’s large glass front broken, with a huge piece of the pane leaning out onto the pavement and the floor inside littered with glass and purple and white boxes, while eyeglass frames still hang on the walls. The shop’s security alarm sounds throughout the clip. Red graffiti on the wall next to the window reads “BRULE LES PRIS…”, with the rest of the slogan cut off. “The looting continues in the heart of Paris, here in the Marais just now,” he wrote when he posted the video.

The damage matched reports that the window of an Afflelou optician near the Pompidou Centre was smashed that evening, as groups of young people dressed in black and wearing balaclavas moved quickly through the area’s streets. Nearby, a door of the landmark BHV Marais department store was broken open and looters got inside. The Paris police prefecture said “scattered groups of young opportunistic delinquents” were trying to put up barricades, set them alight and loot shops, and that officers were stepping in to disperse and arrest them. It reported 108 arrests in the capital on Sunday, 66 of them in the evening, and at least five shops looted, including a clothing store, an electronics store in Belleville and two supermarkets.

The unrest followed a nationwide day of protest against the high cost of living on Saturday, October 17, which descended into violence and widespread looting. The Interior Ministry said 2,397 people were arrested and 997 police officers and gendarmes were injured, seven of them seriously. The Paris prosecutor’s office said more than 550 people were still in custody on Sunday, mostly for handling stolen goods, taking part in a group intending to commit violence, or causing damage.

President Emmanuel Macron condemned the violence six months before the presidential election, saying he wanted “debates with the parties and not in the street, through violence,” and adding that “our country deserves a good presidential election.