Night has fallen for some time and the temperature has already dropped significantly. Since 6 p.m., Tuesday, December 21, on a roundabout in Frouzins, in the Toulouse metropolitan area, a dozen gendarmes have been inspecting vehicles. At 7 p.m., six of them were called on to carry out checks of a different order: that of health passes in establishments open to the public (ERP), such as bars and restaurants.

ERP checks are carried out every day on the territory of the Toulouse Mirail gendarmerie company. And that evening, they take place in Frouzins and Villeneuve-Tolosane, on the constituency of the Cugnaux brigade community.

“These checks make it possible to check whether the people but also the establishments are in order because they have the obligation to verify the passes”, recalls the captain Philippe Gradelle, assistant to the command of the company of Toulouse Mirail.

“It’s for everyone’s health”

Until today, if people have already been checked without a health pass on the territory of the company, no case of false health pass has yet been noted, but “you have to know that it exists”.

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First stop at a bar. The six gendarmes present (three mobile gendarmes, two gendarmes from the Cugnaux brigade community and the captain) are distributed among the fifteen people present in the place at the beginning of the evening. They are greeted with a smile by the owner of the establishment. “It’s important to do it, it’s for everyone’s health,” he says. Customers present the QR code of their health pass, the validity of which is confirmed by the application used by the gendarmes coupled with their identity document. “All is well.”

About twenty people checked

Then direction Villeneuve-Tolosane, a neighboring town, for a second operation in a bar-restaurant. Smartphone and TousAntiCovid application here, a document attesting to a negative 24-hour test there. To each his own pass.

On the twenty people checked that evening, no verbalization was drawn up, neither for the establishments nor for the customers. “We explain to people the reasons for the controls and they understand it well. It also allows reminders from time to time, teaching but, overall, people are in order,” said Captain Gradelle.

Operations which could soon intensify further. Prime Minister Jean Castex has, according to our colleagues BFMTV, confirming information from Parisian, asked the prefects, last Tuesday, to strengthen controls in establishments open to the public. The Minister of Health said he was in favor, for his part, of the possibility for professionals of establishments to control themselves the identity of the public they receive to ensure that the health pass is indeed a real one. . A proposal in the next bill presented in January.