What do police on the front line make of plans to stop the boats?

Times

a day ago

Nicolas Laroye, a veteran of France's border police, spent more than a decade patrolling the coast around Dunkirk in search of migrants. Now he shares the frustration of colleagues who have taken over what has become a near impossible task.'Of course we want to stop the migrants,' he said, as we sat in a cafe. 'But we know that they will keep trying and trying and that in the end they will all get through.'Times have changed since the days when those hoping to reach England lurked in small groups around the ports or the entrance to the Channel Tunnel hoping to stow away in the back of lorries. Back then, 20 years ago, there were far fewer of them and they always came quietly. 'In ten years I never experienced any violence. We didn't even need to handcuff them,' Laroye said.
Now, most evenings, hundreds can gather at one of the wide beaches that line the 70-mile stretch of coast between Dunkirk and Boulogne-sur-Mer. Dozens are ready to board each dinghy, which often wait for them in shallow water: the so-called 'taxi boats'. When the police, often heavily outnumbered, try to intercept them, things can turn ugly in the time it takes reinforcements to come.
'Imagine a situation when you have 50 of them waiting to get on a boat,' said Laroye, 55, who for the past few years has been on secondment to Unsa, a police trade union.
'They have paid thousands of euros and can see the English coast in the distance in front of them, and three police officers turn up and try to stop them from getting on board. Often they will start pelting the police with stones. They have their shields but I know colleagues who have still got hurt.
'It can start when they are still walking down the road. Their aim isn't to hurt the officers. They just don't want to be stopped from getting to the beach.'
Regular police — whether from the border force or units that are increasingly drafted in — are forbidden from speaking directly to the media.
But they can make their feelings felt through Laroye and others seconded to the various police trade unions permitted to speak on their behalf.
The impression they give is growing frustration among officers on the front line tasked with preventing migrants from crossing.
There is also anger at accusations from Britain that they do not do enough to stop migrants, in part because of French operating procedures that have hitherto barred them from interfering with a boat once it is in the water, for fear of endangering those packed on board.
Stopping the 'small boats' is certain to dominate President Macron's talks with Sir Keir Starmer during his state visit to Britain this week. The government appears to be pinning its hopes on plans by the French to change the rules, allowing officers to stop migrant dinghies even when they are at sea — provided they are within 300 metres of the coast.
For this reason, Downing Street seized on footage shot by the BBC on Friday near Boulogne-sur-Mer showing police from the Compagnie de Marche, a specialist unit trained to deal with public disorder, charging into shallow water and slashing the sides of a dinghy. Onboard were dozens of scrambling migrants. No 10 called it a 'significant moment' that could have a 'major impact' on smuggling gangs.
A further eight boats, carrying a total of 517 people, nevertheless made it successfully across the English Channel on that day alone, according to Home Office figures.
This took the numbers so far this year to a new record of just over 20,000, a 50 per cent surge over the same period last year, despite Starmer's vow last July to 'smash the gangs' and 'stop the boats'.
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The French interior ministry declined to confirm a change of tactics. A spokesman said six officers, 'detecting immediate danger', intervened at about 8.30am French time in a 'proportionate manner' to 'avoid any risk to the passengers', adding: 'No one was injured or required emergency care.'
It followed a similar incident on June 13, further north near Gravelines, when two officers also from the Compagnie de Marche waded into waist-deep water to prevent migrants boarding a waiting 'taxi boat'. The local prefecture cited a 'need to safeguard human life', which it said 'takes precedence over all other considerations'.
The scenes raised eyebrows among police themselves. 'Officers are weighed down with kilos of kit,' said Laroye. 'If they get knocked over by a wave they may not be able to get up.' Even the slightest drop of corrosive salt water will destroy the gun that French police routinely carry strapped to their waist.
Authorities already appear to have been quietly changing their rules of engagement in recent years, according to French media reports, although it has failed to make a dent in the numbers.
Internal memos issued by the maritime prefecture of the Channel and the North Sea dated November 2022 and 2023, seen by the television station TV1, authorise forces to intervene at sea to control 'taxi boats', provided they are less than 200 metres off the coast and do not carry more than than three people — presumably the smugglers waiting to pick migrants up.
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Police officers who will have to implement the new rules have poured cold water on British hopes that they will make a substantial difference.
There is a difference between slashing a boat in shallow water and doing so 100, 200 or 300 metres out to sea, according to Julien Soir, a police officer and official with Alliance Nationale Police, a rival union.
'If we want to intervene in this 300-meter range, we would have to have enormous resources,' he explained. 'You need boats, you need people who are trained, you need a lot of things.'
Officers also fear they could face prosecution if migrants die as a result of their intervention. 'If you intercept a taxi boat and make someone fall out and drown, then you as a policeman will be held responsible,' said Régis Debut, a colleague of Laroye's at Unsa.
'The charities would have a field day', he added, in reference to vocal groups that champion the interest of migrants.
Meanwhile thousands of migrants, largely from the Middle East, Afghanistan and Africa, continue to arrive on the French Channel coast where they sleep rough while waiting to cross.
Most evenings, around 7pm or 8pm, columns of people can be seen walking from one encampment near Gravelines, apparently on their way to a meeting point in the dunes behind the beach that has been given to them by the smugglers.
Often they will take a bus from a terminal in front of the nearby out-of-town shopping centre. 'A whole group of them will get on and then suddenly get off at a stop in the middle of nowhere,' a driver waiting there said.
The boats leave from a different point each evening as the traffickers, part of what — with crossings costing up to €5,000 per person — has become a major multimillion pound business, strive to stay one step ahead of the police.
The next morning those that have failed make the journey back to their tents. I encountered one such group on Friday, clutching flimsy life jackets. 'The police stopped us just as we were trying to board,' said one angry Iranian man. Similar scenes are repeated up and down the coast.
Others are picked up by police, either on the streets or on buses, and taken in to have their identity checked and nationality established. Many, though, are from countries that refuse to take back their citizens and so are then released, giving them the chance to attempt the crossing again.
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