The French capital's city hall has denied the possibility that the stolen briefcase could have contained security plans, according to an official statement released by Paris. In the statement, the city said that "initial investigations have shown that the employee did not have any information relating to the organisation or deployment of security forces during the Olympic and Paralympic Games". 

A police source who spoke to AFP last Tuesday said a USB drive containing plans for the Paris municipal police during the Games was lost when a city employee's bag was stolen on a train.

The Paris City Hall employee filed a report on Monday 26 February after noticing the theft of her bag when she had just boarded a train to Creil (Oise) from the Gare du Nord in Paris (10th arrondissement). According to reports, the employee placed the bag on a luggage rack above the seat and discovered the loss in the busy Gare du Nord station on Monday evening.

The City Hall confirmed that a theft report had been filed with the police, but stated that the lost items contained "personal notes related to her work in IT support for the Roads and Transport Department", thus ruling out the possibility that they contained sensitive information on security plans for the Olympic Games. Similarly, the Paris prosecutor's office said the USB drive "contained only notes on road traffic in Paris during the Olympic Games and no sensitive security information". The capital's employee will be investigated to determine whether he violated internal security rules by travelling with the USB drive, the Paris City Hall statement concluded. Around 35,000 security personnel are expected to be on duty every day during the Olympic Games, which will be held in the French capital and other French provinces from 26 July to 11 August, including around two thousand municipal police officers from the capital.

As well as managing crowds and preventing street crime, police will be on high alert for possible terrorist attacks, as France has been a frequent target of Islamist extremists over the past decade.