A missing letter full of meaning. On Wednesday evening, a fast-food restaurant Chamas Tacos in Valence, in Drôme, was threatened with administrative closure. The reason ? A malfunction of the exterior illuminated sign. The letter “C” malfunctioned, the inscription “Hamas Tacos” glowed in the night. A failure that can lead to confusion, at a time when the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is in full swing. Alerted, the Valence municipal police intervened on Wednesday evening, asking the restaurant manager to completely turn off the illuminated sign and threatening him with an “administrative closure”, according to a video posted on TiktTok and relayed on X. An intervention confirmed to Le Figaro by the franchise manager.
A video published in the evening on the social network Snapchat notably shows a large number of police officers around the restaurant, located at 20 avenue de Romans in Valence. “Two patrols,” according to the franchise manager. In the video relayed on Link denied by employees, for whom the “C” has been failing for several months. “If you leave [the illuminated sign as it is] this evening, tomorrow you will have an administrative closure,” replies a police officer.
A version of the intervention confirmed to Le Figaro by the manager of the franchise. “The letter had been broken for months, and we had even made an estimate to renovate the facade of the establishment,” he says. According to him, the police would have clarified that a municipal elected official – and not a simple Valentinois – was at the origin of this “incomprehensible” report. “The correlation never occurred to me. Neither I nor my colleagues saw any claim in it,” he takes offense, especially since “Chamas Tacos is a large franchise today, not a small neighborhood snack bar.”
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According to the author of the video, the municipal agents remained “an hour” in the restaurant, refusing to leave the premises until the light sign was turned off. An “almost impossible” operation for the manager, who, without training as an electrician, had to battle for long periods of time with the restaurant’s two electric meters to manage to turn off the storefront. Contacted, the Valence town hall and the municipal police have not yet commented on the operation.
