Was Inspector Clouseau in charge of the Louvre theft investigation?
First, to refresh your memory on Clouseau:
And this is the sort of incompetence I’m talking about, in the Louvre investigation:
As a manhunt continued on Monday for suspects in the Louvre Museum jewel heist, the Paris Prosecutor said she fears the investigation might be harmed by the “hasty disclosure” over the weekend of the arrests of two other robbery suspects.
Paris Prosecutor Laure Beccuau said the information made public about the arrests in the Louvre case should not have been disclosed.
“I deeply regret the hasty disclosure of this information by informed individuals, without consideration of the investigation,” Beccuau said in a statement her office released Sunday night.
Beccuau added, “This revelation can only harm the investigative efforts of a hundred or so investigators” searching for the stolen jewelry and the perpetrators still at large.
Under French law, the suspects in custody can be held for 96 hours before prosecutors have to charge or release them.
The article also says the apprehended suspects are “French nationals.” But then it goes on to add this:
One of the suspects has dual citizenship in France and Mali, and the other is a dual citizen of France and Algeria, investigators said, adding that both were already known to police from past burglary cases.
And they were nabbed when about to escape to – you guessed it – Mali and Algeria, respectively.
The article has photos of some of the jewels stolen; they have not been recovered. The men also left DNA at the crime scene.
More:
[Louvre Director Laurence Des Cars] said all of the museum’s alarms worked properly, as did its video cameras, but noted a “weakness” in security that was taken advantage of by the thieves. She said the only camera installed outside the Apollo Gallery was facing west and did not cover the window where the thieves broke in and exited.
“The weakness of the Louvre is its perimeter security, which has been a problem for a long time … certainly due to underinvestment,” des Cars told the lawmakers.
So the Louvre authorities knew about this weakness, but never did anything about it because of – lack of money? The Louvre is very large, but apparently one more camera might have helped. And wouldn’t a museum need an alarm systems that goes off when windows are breached or broken? The Louvre thieves used power tools to cut the window, as well as to cut the glass cases that held the jewels.
Some more background about the theft:
Funniest movie I ever saw.
Algeria and Mali. Imagine that.
I just looked and you can buy security cameras on Amazon for less than $100, or sets of them with all sorts of features like face recognition and behavior detection for less than $500. So yeah… maybe Inspector Clouseau needs to bring in Frank Drebin on this one?
Did they also arrest the minkey? Chimpanzee minkey it was.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N6Mg0NLoSUU
Well, this is France and they have the giant Arc de Triomphe.
They beat Liechtenstein or maybe it was Andorra or Monaco.
I mean Cinco de Mayo was when the Mexicans beat them.
om:
All I have to do is hear the word “minkey” and I start laughing.
…apparently one more camera might have helped.
I took an interest in the then current state of the art in surveillance cameras back about 6 years ago. Very high resolution has become rather common. But I was opening an account in a Wells Fargo branch near my house, and waiting in a line of some length. How many cameras did they have?
The place was maybe 1500 sq. feet, give or take. And I counted 15 cameras. I was impressed that it was that many. Apparently, they just refused to have any wide angle lenses covering an extended area.
I also was told at a different bank branch to take off my ball cap and sunglasses while waiting in line. Oh, OK.
Richard Aubrey,
Same.
‘That was a priceless Steinway!’
‘Not anymore.’
Genius!
TommyJay on October 28, 2025 at 6:26 pm:
‘… Very high resolution has become rather common.”
And yet it seems both in TV/films and in real life somehow that resolution is often still inadequate to really identify a person by facial recognition or other features.
I suppose it depends on just what it costs to get that higher level, especially for a smaller business? $500 vs. $2500?
Or am I asking for too much, as say for the CCTVs used to track the Jan 6th pipe bomb deliverer, etc.?? Long distance viewing is presumably a much greater challenge although technology to address that clearly exists.
As with too many things, there are no true solutions, just trade offs [T Sowell] and having CCTV everywhere is a mixed blessing, depending on degree of public coverage, etc.
Have they figured out the “inside job” part yet?
https://youtu.be/Ik7pa3RHoUE?si=H2zy84nEm4Ff-KI5
” I was quite the athlete at the Sureté you know! My hero( a long with Millard Fillmore)!
It’s my understanding that a robbery like this, where a specific item was stolen, there is already a buyer lined up. So, little hope in finding the jewels. I also wonder if the French government has some kind of DNA database of “persons of interest “.