The Case of the Tough Cop

Like Victor Hugo's dogged Javert, Jean Baylot, Prefect of Paris Police, was a policeman with one idea. The shootings, burglaries, thievery and other routine crimes he left to his staff to handle; the shadowy underworld which lies behind the beauty of Paris hardly knew his name. Baylot concentrated 16,000 policemen and his own single-minded will on hunting and harassing Communists. He was uncommonly effective: when Parisian Communists said the name of Jean Baylot, they spat.

When he took over in Paris in 1951, after a career as an anti-Communist trade union official and Resistance fighter, the Reds were overrunning the streets. At the slightest pretext they ran off rowdy demonstrations, built barricades, smashed windows and defaced autos--particularly those of Americans. The police usually stood helplessly by, lest by fighting they provoke even more deviltry.

The Zealot. Baylot ordered Paris' cops to start swinging their white batons, and blandly explained: "There is no defensive action that is not offensive in nature." When the Communists resisted, he gave his cops steel helmets, machine guns and tear gas. His weak eyes squinting through a pair of heavy-rimmed dark glasses, plump little Prefect Baylot looked like a clerk, but he used his force and the terrain like a general.

His big moment came on the day General Ridgway arrived to take over SHAPE from General Eisenhower in May 1952. The Reds were out in full force, crying: "Ridgway, go home!" Baylot met them with 20,000 cops. His men even arrested tubby Top Communist Jacques Duclos. After that day, the Reds never regained control of Paris' streets. In last year's Bastille Day parade they tried, lost seven militants killed in the rioting, and failed.

There were many besides Communists who thought that Baylot's strong-arm men were a little too zealous on occasion. Cardinal Feltin, Archbishop of Paris, protested that some of his worker-priests, arrested in a demonstration, received "treatment unworthy of human beings." (To which Baylot retorted: "I don't care if they're ambassadors, priests, pastors, rabbis, or candy salesmen. If they take part in an illegal demonstration, they will suffer the consequences.") Last April Baylot's cops, on his own responsibility, seized 213,000 copies of the Communist L'Humanite, because of a cartoon showing John Foster Dulles about to drink a glass of French blood, and captioned: "Fill it; I'll pay in dollars." The Communists sued, accusing Baylot of "stealing" papers.

Kick Upstairs. As Bastille Day (July 14) drew near again, word got around that the Prefect of Police and the new Mendes-France government were not hitting it off well. Baylot wanted to ban the traditional Red parade; some Cabinet ministers disagreed; Socialist supporters of the new regime, though antiCommunist, were anti-tough-cop.

Last week the Mendes-France government announced that Baylot had resigned from his job and would be given a "high diplomatic post." This done, the Mendes-France government, on its own, banned the Communist Bastille Day parade. Though he was being kicked upstairs, Baylot was not disturbed. Said he: "We have broken the back of the Communist Party here. They would not dare stage a big demonstration now." His parting gift last week came, ironically, from the Communists: not only did L'Humanite lose its suit against him, but it was ordered to pay Baylot 300,000 francs ($857) for "the offensive character of its unfounded assertions."

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