On Monday, January 27, police captain Laurent Paris, the Parisian education authority's technical security adviser, shook the audience that had gathered to hear the presentation of a "knife" plan, a new component of Paris's knife fight prevention strategy: From a green plastic bag, he pulled out a gigantic knife with a wooden handle, measuring 50 centimeters in total.

"It's an Opinel 13," explained the officer. The knife manufacturing company from Savoie, in the French Alps, described it on its website as a "giant" and "appreciated at country meals and barbecues." Yet it has also become "the totem weapon" used in knife fights, said the police adviser, "a quasi-machete, easily concealable," which had been particularly popularized by certain rappers in their songs and video clips.

It was hard to imagine teenagers, between 13 and 17 years old on average, carrying the 22-centimeter blade around in their school backpacks. And yet, in the space of a few years, the use of this knife – and of edged weapons in general – has become "normalized among many young people," said Nicolas Nordman, deputy mayor of Paris for security matters.

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