Armed robbery in Paris

This figure is up 34% from 2007, when 271 Paris businesses were held up.

These figures cover robberies of businesses other than banks. Bank robberies are additional, as are holdups of individuals (muggings).

This data flies in the face of conventional wisdom, which says that violent crime is rare in Paris –in any event, more common in the peripheral towns where riots flared a few years ago– and that criminals prefer property crimes that do not involve violence, like burglarizing apartments when their occupants are away.

Unlike holdups at heavily fortified French banks or jewelers (or a convenience store or gas station holdup in the USA), the Paris robberies involve almost any kind of retail business. They occur anywhere, any time. The robbers are often young and impulsive, putting ordinary people at risk.

Sometimes things go terribly wrong.

In the Latin Quarter, there’s a sushi restaurant on the rue Monge: Planet Sushi. Notwithstanding the name, the restaurant is modest, niched on the ground floor of a residential building. On a Sunday night early this year, two young men, both aged 22, staged a robbery. Diners were present. One robber had a stun gun; the other carried a pistol. The pair made off with the cash in the till.

Then an astonishing thing happened: seven restaurant employees took off in hot pursuit of the robbers. There was a chase. The employees caught up with robbers. A scuffle ensued. One of the employees carried a knife –maybe he was a sushi chef– and he used it, wounding a robber. Sadly, the wound was serious, and the robber later died from his injury. As fate would have it, the nighttime struggle took place next to a neighborhood police station. The police called an ambulance for the wounded robber, and arrested everyone else.

I know that my French friends will disagree with a brazenly American take on this incident, but my sympathies rest with the restaurant employees. I’m concerned about the safety of workers and customers; the fate of robbers troubles me less.