Looters Empty Paris Electronics Store on Second Night of Unrest

Dozens of looters raided a Darty electronics store in the Belleville neighborhood of northeast Paris on Sunday evening, October 18, as rioting and looting hit the French capital for a second night in a row after nationwide protests against the high cost of living.

Footage shared by Farid Benlagha Le Hazif shows a large crowd, mostly young men, many with hoods up or faces covered by masks, outside the graffiti-covered store front. People duck under the half-raised metal shutter and come back out with large boxes, including flat-screen televisions, while someone drops a hoverboard box on the pavement. The camera moves into the crowd and up to the shutter as voices shout “Vite, vite!” (“Quick, quick!”) and “Y a plus rien!” (“There’s nothing left!”). No police or security can be seen, and a bystander leaning on a parked car films the scene on his phone. Benlagha wrote that the store had been looted for 40 minutes and that police were “totally absent.”

The Paris police prefecture reported 108 arrests in the capital on Sunday, 66 of them in the evening, and counted at least five stores looted, including the Darty in Belleville, a clothing shop and two supermarkets. Paris mayor Emmanuel Grégoire said “at least thirty” businesses were looted again on Sunday and overnight, describing “unbearable scenes,” and authorities imposed a curfew from 11 p.m. to 6 a.m. in parts of the city, including the Les Halles area and Place de la République.

The unrest followed the October 17 day of action against the rising cost of living, which brought together unions, students, farmers and “Yellow Vest”-style groups. The Interior Ministry said 550,000 people marched nationwide, 110,000 of them in Paris, while the CGT union put the figure at nearly 800,000. Peaceful marches turned into riots in several cities by late afternoon, and the ministry reported 2,397 arrests and 997 police officers and gendarmes injured, seven of them seriously. Interior Minister Laurent Nuñez admitted there had been “a loss of control” in some cities and too few officers on the ground. The country’s main retail federation said about 1,500 businesses were targeted, with damage estimated at “several hundred million euros.”