An influencer refusing to settle a bill of 1,500 euros. A jet-setter drunk enough to flirt her way out of a breathalyser. A watch stolen off a tourist's wrist, valued at 40,000 euros. That, more or less, is a standard Tuesday in July for the gendarmes of Saint-Tropez.
The long-running French TV show Appels d'urgence aired a new episode in late August, cameras embedded with the brigade through their day-to-day interventions on the peninsula. No nostalgia for Louis de Funès. Just theft, fraud and dangerous driving, as the episode title puts it with commendable bluntness.
What tends to get lost behind the port's gleaming façade: the village draws a very particular kind of crime. Wealthy visitors bring wealthy targets, and the thieves who follow them have specialised accordingly. Luxury watches are the trophy of the season. The roads, meanwhile, host a rotating cast of drivers who probably shouldn't be behind a wheel in any jurisdiction.
Still, it is something to watch the gendarmes navigate all of it without pausing for breath. The peninsula's population swells to something unrecognisable each summer, and the brigade expands accordingly, stretched across interventions that have very little in common with the sleepy village the rest of the year knows.
The episode, broadcast on TFX, is a useful reminder that there is real, unglamorous work happening just out of frame from the yachts and the rosé. The locals have always known this. Now the rest of France does too.
