We’re too dysfunctional to stop small boats, admits French police chief

Force is ill-equipped to deal with ‘violence’ from migrants and spends British money on wrong equipment

France’s efforts to stop the migrant boats are dysfunctional in the face of extreme violence orchestrated by people-smuggling gangs, a policing chief has admitted.

Marc Alegre, who represents officers in Calais and Dunkirk, said efforts by police and gendarmes were disjointed, plagued by a lack of training, faced shortages of recruits and spent British money on the wrong type of equipment.

He said his Unité police union was pushing for the French government to set up dedicated police units to specialise in tackling immigration and taking on the people smugglers so that they could reverse the record level of migrant small-boat crossings this year.

The admission came as 1,097 migrants crossed the Channel on Saturday in 17 boats, close to the daily record this year of 1,195 on May 31.

It takes the total past 30,000, up 36 per cent on last year’s figure at the same point and the highest number since the first arrivals in 2018.

Mr Alegre said officers’ lives were being put at risk by the unprecedented violence by migrants, who were encouraged by the people smugglers to attack officers with petrol and smoke bombs, stones and burning life jackets and to vandalise police vehicles.

The ongoing clashes between police and migrants meant police were running out of tear gas, grenades and vehicles.

“Police are pelted with stones practically every night. We’re short of cars because they’re vandalised by migrants, who the smugglers and traffickers order to throw stones at us to slow us down,” he said.

“I have colleagues who are regularly injured, who go to hospital because they’re doing this job. We use grenades and tear gas to stop the migrants, but they throw stones, smoke bombs and burning life jackets at us. All our vehicles are damaged. We’re practically out of ammunition. It’s not easy every day, every single day.

“Last year, two night-shift officers were surrounded by migrants and almost got burned to death. The migrants had set fire to the place with bottles of petrol. They were dog handlers. Two against 60. They risked their lives to prevent a boat from reaching England. Is it worth dying burned alive to let a boat pass? Would you?”

He conceded there were significant “coordination” problems between different forces policing the northern French coast, which remained too “compartmentalised”. He said that police lacked any specific “training” on how to handle the migrant crisis.

It comes after the number of migrants crossing the Channel topped 30,000 in record time. Some 1,097 migrants crossed on Saturday, the highest daily number for four months and bringing the total for 2025 to 30,100.

Reinforcements sent in the summer months and dedicated only to tackling migrant crossings were mostly not from the area so did not know it as well as local police, who continued to have a “dual mission” of fighting crime and dealing with migrants.

“That’s not good for the French taxpayer,” he said. “In my opinion, we need to create special units that would work all year round, covering the entire border from the Belgian border to Boulogne, both the police and the gendarmerie, but working only on the beaches.

“It’s currently too compartmentalised, meaning that if, for example, gendarmes between Calais and Dunkirk are attacked by migrants and find themselves surrounded, which has already happened, the gendarmes will call the police or vice versa. It would be quicker if there was direct communication.”

Mr Alegre said police sent from outside the region lacked training. “No one has been trained in France [to deal with migrants and small boat departures]. It’s all on-the-job experience. [Local police] know the beaches, we know the migrants from working there every day, and we know how to deal with them,” he said.

“But when you come from Lyon or Paris and you come to work on the beach, it’s not the same job. When you work in a housing project, it’s not the same way of working as on the beach.”

He said there were also recruitment problems. “At the police academy, where people can choose their police station in France, they know that if they go to Calais or Dunkirk, they’ll work twice as hard as in other places,” he said.

“We have to motivate them because they have to do the normal work of the police, but on top of that, they have to guard the borders. That’s twice as much work for them, with more risks and more work, but for nothing extra.”

He said that British funds were not always spent in the most effective manner. “Regarding the resources bought with British funds, often we don’t ask the police officers who are on the ground for the equipment they really need,” he said.

“For example, we got some 4x4 vehicles that can go on the beach. That’s good, but my colleagues would have preferred pick-up trucks because when we discover a boat, we have to put it somewhere, and it doesn’t fit in the boot of a seven-seater. But a boat with an engine can be put in the back of a pick-up truck and driven away.”

He believed the new one in, one out deal with the UK could act as a deterrent provided those deported from the UK were not sent to the northern French coast.

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/gift/8e9b488cf633dd11