Officers in the Paris police department.
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In General
- Butt-Monkey: The cops get outsmarted, manipulated and humiliated by Assane on a regular basis, and their incompetence is typically Played for Laughs.
- Good Is Not Nice: With the exception of Guédira, the police tend to be short-tempered and unsympathetic towards Assane.
- Hero Antagonist: The cops are generally good if occasionally unpleasant people trying to catch a wanted thief and kidnapper while still adhering to regulations (with the exception of Dumont, who nonetheless gets a pretty complex and nuanced portrayal).
- Punch-Clock Villain: The many nameless members of the force are this, since they're just doing the jobs they're paid for and don't bear any particular ill-will towards Assane outside of the fact that he's a criminal.
Gabriel Dumont
Commissioner Gabriel Dumont
Click here to see him as a younger man
Played by: Vincent Garanger (present day), Johann Dionnet (1990s)
Once an up-and-coming police officer who was in charge of handling the Babakar Diop case, Dumont now occupies the highest position in the Parisian police department, but often finds himself at the beck and call of Hubert Pellegrini.
- Continuity Cameo: He gets a blink-and-you'll-miss-it appearance in Part 3's 1998 flashbacks as the police officer who arrests Keller following his, Assane's and Bruno's failed jewel heist.
- Cynicism Catalyst: It's implied that his being blackmailed by Hubert into helping frame Babakar was this for him, since in the flashbacks he's shown to have been an honest cop.
- Da Chief: In the series present-day, he's the commissioner of the Paris police department, although as of Part 3 he's seemingly lost his job on account of his criminal activity.
- Dirty Cop: Dumont has been involved in several episodes of corruption and has apparently accepted bribes from multiple notorious criminals (including a Balkan Bastard sex trafficker). He claims it was to pay for the education of his children. He's also squarely in Hubert's camp, and gets arrested for collusion at the end of Part 2.
- Distressed Dude: When he's kidnapped by Assane.
- Even Evil Has Loved Ones: Shady business relations aside, Dumont clearly loves his wife and children dearly, to the point where he can be coerced into doing just about anything by even the vaguest of threats against them.
- Even Evil Has Standards: While he's an amoral corrupt cop who covers up Hubert Pellgrini's illegal acts, he's still reluctant to use Assane's son Raoul as leverage for Pellegrini, and is genuinely remorseful that framing Babakar left Assane fatherless.
- Forced into Evil: When he was still a detective, he tried to do the right thing and confronted Hubert about Babakar being innocent and the whole theft being an insurance scam. Then Hubert threatened his wife and he has been at his beck and call ever since.
- Hair Today, Gone Tomorrow: In 1995, he had a full head of hair, while in 2020 he's balding.
- Hidden Depths: He had intended to write a novel after his retirement from the police force.
- I Have Your Wife: Dumont finds himself on the receiving end of this from both Hubert and Assane (although in both cases they're essentially bluffing).
- Obstructive Bureaucrat: Comes across as being this to his subordinates, but it's actually because he's desperately trying to cover his tracks with regards to his corruption.
- Shower of Angst: In the third episode, after his kidnapping and interrogation.
- Tempting Apple: Cigarette, in this case. His accepting one from Hubert in 1995, even though he's trying to quit smoking, symbolizes the start of their "partnership" (which is to say, the start of his fall from upstanding, forthright police detective to corrupt, deceitful commissioner).
- Tragic Villain: Dumont initially approached his job in an honest manner, and fully intended to build a case against Hubert for insurance fraud. However, after Hubert threatened Dumont's wife while also making it clear that he could act with impunity due to his many connections in the government and the police department, Dumont ultimately agreed to aid in Babakar's false conviction.
- What Happened to the Mouse?: We briefly encounter Hubert Pellegrini, now serving a prison sentence, at the very end of Part 3, but Dumont remains unseen for the entire season (in the present timeline at least), and the exact nature of his fate is unclear, although it can pretty easily be assumed that he's behind bars as well. How his family handled his downfall is also ignored.
- What You Are in the Dark: He fails this test due to his frequent collaborations with Hubert Pellegrini. While he's not motivated by any desire to do evil, it doesn't change the fact that he's corrupt, and that he stood by while a number of innocent people were murdered at his accomplice's behest.
- Would Not Hurt A Child: When Pellegrini places Raoul under his custody to leverage him over Assane, Dumont tries to be friendly and polite to him to cheer him up, even offering him pizza.
- Yes-Man: In the present day, Dumont seems to exist to do Hubert's bidding.
Romain Laugier
Captain Romain Laugier
Played by: Vincent Londez
A bossy police captain who demands excellence from those he supervises.
- Berserk Button: Having Assane slip through his fingers. The incidence of this at Luxembourg Gardens resulted in Laugier having a rather public meltdown.
- By-the-Book Cop: He's very big on following proper protocols and procedures, and is inclined to take orders from his superiors at face value. Initially, he regards Guédira's theories on the case with a great deal of disdain, but as the series progresses he comes to realize that his nerdy subordinate is onto something, and increasingly places more faith in him.
- Chuck Cunningham Syndrome: He disappears from the show in Part 3 with no reason given as to his absence, while Belkacem takes his old role of captain. Some viewers have suggested that he received an offscreen promotion to commissioner now that Dumont is gone.
- Inspector Javert: His main desire is to uphold the rule of the law...which means that no matter how likable and charismatic Assane is, he definitely wants to see him behind bars. Downplayed in that he eventually prioritizes arresting Dumont over arresting Assane.
- Lead Police Detective: He's The Captain of his squad (which includes Belkacem, Guédira and seemingly a few other officers), but is still subservient to Dumont.
Sofia Belkacem
Lieutenant Sofia Belkacem
Played by: Shirine Boutella
A police lieutenant, later captain.
- Action Girl: If there's a fight to be had, Belkacem will be sure to insert herself into it. The moment Guédira calls her up with the news that he's found "Paul Sernine", she drops everything and drives to Normandy to help him out.
- Aesop Amnesia: At the end of Part 2 she's finally come around to trusting Guédira's leads with regards to the connection between Assane and Arsène Lupin. But by the time Part 3 rolls around, she's gone back to largely ignoring him.
- Badass Arm-Fold: Her usual stance.
- The Captain: Gets promoted to this role in Part 3.
- Characterization Marches On: Seemingly due to Laugier's unexplained absence in Part 3, Belkacem winds up taking on some of his character traits in that season, in particular his bossy behavior and close-minded attitude, whereas in Parts 1 and 2 she'd been her squad's Right-Hand Attack Dog.
- Cloudcuckoolander's Minder: For Guédira.
- Death Glare: Makes regular use of these when she's taking part in an interrogation.
- Didn't Think This Through: Belkacem often fails to plan for unforeseen circumstances when chasing after Assane, and she's not good at anticipating his actions either. This means that he's easily able to use the element of surprise in order to slip from her grasp.
- Expository Hairstyle Change: In Parts 1 and 2, Belkacem has prominent blonde streaks; these are gone in Part 3, which is set a year later. Her hair is also substantially longer, and cut into a fringe akin to that of Boo from Monsters, Inc.
- Fair Cop: Even those who don't care for Belkacem as a character will usually admit that Shirine Boutella is very attractive.
- Genre Blindness: Belkacem behaves as though she's chasing the Big Bad in a standard police thriller, rather than a canny Lovable Rogue in a modern-day update of the Arsène Lupin stories. Her Genre Savvy counterpart Guédira repeatedly tries to fill her in on what's really going on, but for the most part she dismisses this until the end of Part 2.
- Gun Nut: When in a crisis, her first move is usually to break out a pistol and point it directly at the source of the problem.
- Hair-Trigger Temper: If anyone in the show is going to let loose with a barrage of curse words, it's probably going to be Belkacem.
- Idiot Ball: She picks it up fairly regularly due to a combination of impulsivity and chronic Aesop Amnesia, which is the main reason why she's fairly divisive in the fandom.
- Inspector Lestrade: Belkacem is great at making arrests and intimidating suspects, but struggles when called upon to do any real detective work. She's seemingly unable to crack a case without Guédira's help, and gets embarrassingly out-sleuthed by a fifteen-year-old boy and his mother despite the fact that she's a trained police officer.
- Kicking Ass in All Her Finery: At the Pellegrinis' concert in Chapter 10, Belkacem pulls a gun on Assane and helps arrest Dumont and Hubert...all the while wearing an evening dress.
- Kryptonite Factor: Human remains, apparently. Despite her generally tough nature, Belkacem is freaked out by the skulls and other bones that she and Laugier encounter while attempting to track down Assane and Benjamin in Paris' Catacombs.
- That One Level: In-Universe, she appears to regard bagging Assane as this. No matter how many times she thinks she's caught him, he always manages to slip away from her grasp.
- Tsundere: Type A variant. She's pigheaded and extremely tactless, but she appears nonetheless to have an affection for Guédira, although she Cannot Spit It Out.
Youssef Guédira
Youssef Guédira
Played by: Soufiane Guerrab
A young detective with a decidedly unorthodox approach to solving cases, Guédira nearly matches Assane in his love of Arsène Lupin.
- Adaptational Intelligence: Guédira is substantially more clever than Inspector Ganimard, his inspiration from the original Arséne Lupin stories.
- Arch-Enemy: Played with. Assane considers—or at least likes to nickname—that Guédira is the Ganimard to Assane's Lupin, and Guedira is indeed the only police officer actually willing to understand how Assane thinks or be capable of ever being one step behind him. However, since nobody ever believes Guédira's theories, let alone actually gives him the resources to follow up on them, his ability to challenge Assane is fairly limited.
- Ascended Fanboy: Guédira is all too happy to play Ganimard in the extended cat-and-mouse game he and Assane share, even if that means that he never really manages to gain the upper hand on his quarry.
- The Big Board: Makes one in order to formulate his theory about the connections between the crimes the police are dealing with and the Arsène Lupin stories.
- Badass Bookworm: He keeps copies of the Lupin books at his desk at work, for which he sometimes gets mocked by his brawnier fellow police officers. But despite his being a nerd, he's willing and able to get involved in confrontational or dangerous situations in service of the law.
- Bunny-Ears Lawyer: What with his unapologetic geekiness, not to mention his and Assane's Odd Friendship, he's certainly a far cry from the stereotypical police officer, but he's nonetheless able to do his job extremely well.
- Cassandra Truth: Guédira is often correct about what Assane is like and what he's up to, but his colleagues rarely take anything he says seriously. In the first season, just when they're starting to believe, Dumont steps in to take him off the case and further discredit him.
- Celibate Eccentric Genius: He's single, has his fair share of odd personality traits, and is far and away the most insightful of the police officers in his unit.
- Cloudcuckoolander: The other police officers regard him as this, due to his hunch that the robbery of Marie-Antoinette's necklace and the kidnapping of Dumont are both linked to the Arsène Lupin stories. Of course, it turns out that he's entirely correct.
- Defeat Means Menial Labor: As a punishment for pushing the Lupin angle, Dumont removes him from the necklace case and gives him stacks of paperwork to do.
- Determinator: If he thinks he's right about something, he'll go to absolutely any lengths to prove it, and won't hesitate to disobey direct orders from his superiors. Needless to say, this causes much irritation and hand-wringing in the police department. However, Guédira's co-workers are unable to be too angry with him given that his detective work has bailed them out multiple times.
- Enemy Mine:
- He works with Assane in Chapter 6 to help him rescue Raoul from Leonard, but the partnership dissolves when Assane realizes that Guédira is a cop and that he wants to involve the police. Later though, Assane continues to keep in contact with Guédira and helps him to find evidence of Dumont's corruption.
- In Part 3, Assane once again enlists Guédira's help in order to trap Manon in a phoney art sale. This time he gets a makeover from Assane, being turned into "Justin Avisto", a collector of stolen paintings.
- Establishing Character Moment: Right after the Louvre heist, he calls Laugier up and tells him that the case they're investigating reminds him of one of the Arsène Lupin stories, all of which he's read. This immediately clues viewers in to the fact that a) he's a huge nerd and b) he's one of the sharpest officers in the police department.
- "Eureka!" Moment: He has one when he figures out the that Assane's aliases are Significant Anagrams.
- Everyone Can See It: His crush on Belkacem is extremely obvious to Assane, who attempts to play The Matchmaker for the pair of police officers during his and Guédira's team-up in episode 3.05.
- Genre Savvy: His familiarity with the Lupin books and his understanding of the tropes of classic detective fiction ultimately help him to track Assane down.
- Great Detective: He's brilliant at spotting clues and solving puzzles.
- Gut Feeling: Guédira doesn't really have any fact-based reason to believe that Assane will be in Étretat on December 11th. However, his intuition turns out to be correct.
- Hero Antagonist: He's part of a team that's trying to catch and jail Assane, but is generally easy to root for due to his portrayal as a likeable nerd whose ideas are repeatedly dismissed despite being logically sound. And at the end of Part 2, it's Guédira who encourages Laugier and Belkacem to let Assane go while they arrest Dumont.
- In-Series Nickname: Assane almost exclusively calls him "Ganimard" after comparing Guédira to the inspector in their brief team-up. The nickname becomes something of a Trust Password that Assane uses to get in touch with him.
- The Mole: For Assane starting in Part 2.
- Nice Guy: He's a decent man who gets a lot of crap from other people in his workplace, but still attempts to be a good cop.
- Perpetual Frowner: He's lost in deep thought about something or other almost all the time.
- Sickly Neurotic Geek: When Guédira falsely calls in sick in order to catch a train to Normandy in pursuit of Assane, Laugier immediately becomes suspicious and asks Belkacem if she thinks he's really ill. Belkacem responds that she thinks Guédira always looks ill.
- Skewed Priorities: Slightly. Even when Assane is betraying and imprisoning him, he's still so much of a Lupin nerd that he can't help but give a goofy starstruck giggle when Assane refers to him as his Ganimard. Even his colleagues occasionally accuse him of getting so into living his Lupin fantasy that he loses sight of the reality in front of them—though to a degree, they tend to turn out to be Wrong Genre Savvy.
- Socially Awkward Hero: Despite his obvious Book Smarts, Guédira has a tendency to be Innocently Insensitive, sometimes making bad jokes at inappropriate times. The most darkly comedic example of his lack of social skills comes in episode 3.02, in which he interrupts the proceedings of Assane's funeral and, to the exasperation of Belkacem, demands that the casket be opened to prove that Assane is in fact dead. This predictably winds up horrifying Assane's family. For what it's worth, he's completely right; Guédira unfortunately did have the basic decency not to punch Assane's "corpse" to get a reaction.
- Sympathetic Inspector Antagonist: A quintessential example of this trope, right down to the fact that, due to their shared fandom of Arsène Lupin, he understands Assane far better than any of his colleagues. This also means that he's helpfully able to point out which crimes Assane actually wasn't responsible for (such as Léonard's murder—after all, "Lupin doesn't kill").
- Triang Relations: During Part 3, he finds himself in an inconvenient semi-love-triangle between Belkacem and Fleur Bélanger, a journalist who has been following Assane's story.
- Worthy Opponent: He generally treats Assane with a mix of starstruck awe and dogged determination. In the opposite direction, Guédira is the only member of the police Assane actually respects and appreciates.
- What the Hell, Hero?: On the receiving end on one of these when Belkacem berates him for not turning in Assane. She even tells him he's behaving just like a crook when he dares her to arrest him with no evidence.
- You Have to Believe Me!:
- He spends most of Part 1 attempting to pitch his theories to his co-workers, all of whom think the whole thing is ridiculous. Eventually he gets thrown off the case of the necklace theft. However, he's later proved right, and fellow cops Laugier and Belkacem help him bring about Dumont's downfall.
- In Part 3, despite his having been correct about basically everything, Guédira is once again shot down by Belkacem after he tries to explain why he thinks that Assane is still alive. This time he's frustrated enough to leak his ideas to Fleur Bélanger. Belkacem is utterly livid when Guédira's theory hits the front page.
