The theft of “priceless” French crown jewels from the Louvre Museum in Paris on Sunday should lead all institutions that hold valuable items to assess their security measures, say Northeastern University experts.
“This robbery may rewrite museum security protocols,” says Nikos Passas, professor of criminology and criminal justice and co-director of Northeastern’s Institute for Security and Public Policy. Even up-to-date technologies need to be assessed against the low-tech methods that the Louvre thieves used. “This lift, cut and escape is just stunning.”
Sunday’s heist at one of the world’s busiest and most famous art museums stunned Passas and other Northeastern experts for its brazen timing — 30 minutes after the museum opened. All told, the heist took seven minutes, according to news reports.
This presents questions about the quality of security training, technology and preparedness for forced entry that should be on the minds of exhibitors of valuable items, Passas says. Because, he says, if thieves can outsmart the Louvre, then all institutions are vulnerable.
“How on earth can this happen in the center of Paris?” asks Passas.
News reports quote French Interior Minister Laurent Nuñuz describing the jewels as “priceless” and of “immeasurable heritage value.” French President Emmanuel Macron posted on Twitter that the theft, in which thieves broke into the second floor of the museum’s Apollo Gallery and stole eight pieces of priceless jewelry, was “an attack on a heritage that we cherish because it is our history.”
According to news reports, masked thieves used a ladder to enter the building and grinders to break a window. Once inside they smashed two display cases and took nine pieces of jewelry, including a diadem worn by the wife of Napoleon III. They dropped that piece once outside after climbing back down the ladder. Then they sped off on motorbikes.
Heists on this scale are not unheard of, but the nature of this one is surprising because of the location, experts say.
“Remember, the Louvre was a palace,” says Passas. “I mean you’re talking about a heist in the Hall of Kings.”
But it is also a very crowded museum and security may not be adequate, he adds.
“I was at the Louvre this summer and it is a very overcrowded place with extraordinarily valuable items exhibited,” he says. “Some of the items are massive but there are items that are small. So you would have expected a level of security with respect to the people, the cameras and technology and the tags.”
If the thieves had help from inside the museum, he adds, it may have been simply information about the best time to break into the hall.
The historical value of the building may add to the challenge of protecting its contents, says Stephanie Hanor, director of the Mills Art Museum on Northeastern’s Oakland campus. Because the building itself is an artifact, she says, security measures have to take that into consideration.
“You’re not just preserving the crown jewels that are held in that room,” she says. “You’re also preserving the facility. How do you balance what that space is for visitors while protecting it?”
Many of the high-tech security measures familiar to viewers of heist films like “Mission Impossible,” where thieves have to crouch to avoid laser motion sensors, would be used at night, Passas says. During the day when visitors are present, those types of measures would be turned off so people can move through the room.
But other measures, including tiny digital asset tags placed directly on valuable objects, can potentially allow the stolen goods to be tracked — if the Louvre was using them.
“I expect that if they have them, they would not disclose it,” he says. “If they have them, they know where [the jewels] are and they’re going after them in the most efficient way they can. It would be another embarrassment if it turns out they didn’t have them.”
The timing was surprising, Hanor says, but also clever. Security guards present in the large hall during the heist focused on protecting visitors who were also in the room, rather than interfering with the heist.
“It’s really curious that they did it in the daytime when there were people in there,” she says. “But it may be smart because they know that the staff and guards are going to protect the people in those few minutes that they’re in there.”
If the jewelry is not recovered, Passos says, there could be a few different outcomes. The pieces could be taken apart and the jewels and precious metals sold separately, but at much less value than the intact pieces would fetch. There could be black market collectors, he says, who would buy the pieces for their own private enjoyment and bragging rights.
“Art is something that can be laundered through a variety of channels,” he says. “This is a way of actually making use of ill-gotten assets and acquiring items of value without having to show receipts. An interesting part of this story is going to be whether this was a targeted theft for specific buyers.”
The Louvre heist is the latest, but not the first, museum theft to capture the public’s imagination. In 1990, 13 works of art were stolen from Boston’s Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum, including two paintings by Rembrandt, a painting by Johannes Vermeer and a Napoleonic eagle finial. The works have never been recovered.
