‘They act with total impunity’: Paris city hall declares war on graffiti vandals

 

‘They act with total impunity’: Paris city hall declares war on graffiti vandals

 

Officials promise to track down and prosecute those who ‘tag’ city’s historic monuments, statues and grand buildings

 

Kim Willsher in Paris

Thu 17 Apr 2025 18.43 CEST

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2025/apr/17/they-act-with-total-impunity-paris-city-hall-declares-war-on-graffiti-vandals

 

In Paris’s central Place de la République, the magnificent lions at the feet of the statue of Marianne are once again covered in graffiti.

 

Along the nearby Boulevard Saint-Martin – part of the Grands Boulevards that bisect the north of the city – the trunk of every plane tree has been crudely sprayed with a name.

 

The front of majestic stone apartment buildings, some dating back more than 200 years, are similarly “tagged” with stylised initials or names. So are the benches, flower boxes, front doors, post boxes and the plinth under the bust of the half British 19th-century playwright Baron Taylor. In fact, anything that does not move has been tagged.

 

Now Paris city hall has declared war on the vandals and promised to track them down, prosecute and seek fines for some of the estimated €6m (£5.1m) of damage they cause every year.

 

The latest anti-tag campaign is being waged by Ariel Weil, the mayor of France’s central district covering the first to fourth arrondissements on the right bank of the Seine. Weil is particularly infuriated by the repeated vandalism to the Marianne, the female symbol of the nation and a listed historic monument.

 

“I’ve asked police to use cameras and I will take legal action each time and work out the cost to the city in each case,” Weil told Le Parisien. “Everyone needs to work together: city hall, the police and the courts. People have to know that damaging a public building is not nothing.”

 

François Louis, the president of an association of Parisiens who use city hall’s official DansMaRue app to signal damage, dumping and antisocial behaviour in public spaces, says he has heard it all before.

 

He said a core group of about 50 “serial taggers” were responsible for half of the tags across the city and had been operating with impunity for decades.

 

City hall has said it will seek fines for people who ‘tag’ buildings with stylised initials or names for some of the estimated €6m of damage they cause each year. Photograph: Elsa/Getty Images

 

“Some of these serial taggers are arrested, released and are back tagging again the next day. Some take pictures or film themselves and post on social media. They act with total impunity,” Louis said.

 

“We need to catch those who do it time and time again. It shouldn’t be beyond the capability of the national police to investigate, in fact it’s disconcertingly easy. They should be taking images from CCTV, matching it to phone mast records and tracing these serial taggers.”

 

He added: “Can you image if Notre Dame was tagged? When the Gilets Jaunes tagged the Arc de Triomphe it was headline news so why are we letting these people vandalise the historic monument at Place de la République?”

 

Paris police prefecture says the number of tagging cases it has handled increased by 51% in the last two years from 317 to 479. Those taken to court and convicted can face up to two years in prison and fines of up to €30,000 for the most serious damage.

 

Despite repeated threats of clampdowns, there has been only one prosecution in three years. In 2022, a Paris court sentenced a man known as Six Sax to two months in prison and gave him a €17,000 fine.

 

City hall says the cost of repairing the damage falls not only on public authorities but also on private property owners if the graffiti on a building is above the first floor. Officials also worry that the chemicals used are causing permanent damage to the stone of monuments and buildings and the trees.

 

Emmanuel Grégoire, a former deputy mayor of Paris who hopes to be elected as city mayor next year, said the authority had been compiling files on the worst serial taggers with a view to producing evidence for any eventual court cases.

 

“These investigators take photographs and look at social networks and AI to identify the signatures,” he said. “Many of the taggers are not anonymous but operate under their own names with a sense of impunity.”

 

Sitting in a cafe just off Place de la République, Grégoire pointed to tags all along the facade of a building opposite. “They’ve gone along from balcony to balcony tagging the wall. It’s a real problem all over Paris but this is one of the worst-hit areas.”

 

Louis said the ubiquitous tags are a stain on the city’s magnificent Hausmannian avenues of the Grands Boulevards.

 

“They’re like dogs pissing against a wall to mark their territory,” he said. “It gives a very poor impression. People who have a certain image of the city in their mind arrive here and see whole districts trashed by tagging.”