Recent historiography about the events of autumn 1961 in Paris tends to consider this repression as the result of Maurice Papon’s action, supposedly reproducing the methods of counter-insurgency he had learned before, in Morocco and Algeria. This article contends that such a thesis notably neglects the role of police demands in the decision to pronounce a curfew. And finally, the reconstitution of the process of decision making shows that Papon’s former experience was not simply reproduced as such.