2026 Municipal Elections: Mathilde Panot Affirms That Elected LFI Mayors Will Disarm Their Municipal Police

Outcry following Mathilde Panot 's comments. Nine months before the 2026 local elections, during which La France Insoumise (LFI) hopes to strengthen its presence in municipal councils, the leader of the LFI deputies sparked a heated debate this Sunday by declaring on BFMTV that the Mélenchonist mayors elected next spring would disarm the municipal police in the municipalities where they are equipped. And could even go so far as to abolish them altogether.

In return, the left-wing movement will propose that the officers concerned "be reinstated into the national police force," for the benefit of "community policing." This controversial position was formulated in response to the bill introduced by François-Noël Buffet, the Minister Delegate to the Minister of the Interior, who intends to "increase the powers of municipal police officers" in order to adapt their legal framework "to the new realities of insecurity," he said this Sunday in Le Parisien.

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Another announcement that is likely to cause a stir: while the government "also advocates a wider use of image capture technologies" , by "giving rural guards access to video surveillance images and the use of body cameras that municipal police officers already have" , the Val-de-Marne elected official has shown herself to be radically opposed to this philosophy. And instead advocates the dismantling of certain video surveillance systems. "We have to look at the framework of the contracts, but I am not in favor of putting cameras everywhere, which have never proven their usefulness" , Mathilde Panot developed, thus confirming that the future LFI mayors will implement a plan to remove the digital equipment already installed.

Also read: Why does the left still have so much trouble with security?

In a sequence with a vehement tone and sometimes confused reasoning, the parliamentarian continued: "Don't pretend that it's extremely shocking to propose this. All those who have put municipal police everywhere, who have overarmed them at all costs and who have installed surveillance cameras, what has that created? What has that created? These are not solutions," she said, without giving the beginning of an answer to the question she had pretended to ask. Then to associate this supposedly harmful policy with the "clean place" operations launched under the impetus of Gérald Darmanin, when he was Minister of the Interior, to strengthen the fight against drug trafficking in deprived neighborhoods.

A dig that did not escape the one who is now Minister of Justice. "Translation: with this left, you will no longer have the right to security. The left without the people," pinned the Minister of Justice on X. Against a backdrop of growing rivalries within the central bloc in view of the 2027 presidential election, the mayor of Le Havre (Seine-Maritime), Édouard Philippe, already a declared candidate for the Élysée, quickly followed suit: "It is up to the voters not to fall for it," chastised the former Prime Minister. On the Republican side, Valérie Pécresse, the head of the Ile-de-France region, also castigated the stance of LFI which "chooses insecurity in our communities!" "We understand better why they want to bring down our security shield with the communists. In the municipal elections, we will do everything to block them," promised the former presidential candidate.

The fact remains that Mathilde Panot's statements have also been vilified by certain left-wing figures. Among them, the socialist mayor of Montpellier (Hérault) Michaël Delafosse, who has long been at open war with the Insoumis. "The arming of the municipal police allows it to intervene anywhere, alone or alongside the national police, it can, in the event of obvious danger, act to protect but also to protect itself in self-defense," he wrote on the same social network, adding in passing that "video protection allows the national police, under judicial authority, to identify the perpetrators and bring justice to the victims." A controversy that will undoubtedly continue to fuel political debate at the beginning of the week.