A public building that raises the alarm is good. One that defends itself is something else entirely.
Town halls, municipal workshops, sports halls, libraries, technical rooms, social welfare offices: this page is here to give honest answers to a public facilities manager's questions. Does this sound shield belong in your facilities? Where should it go? And how does it work alongside the municipal police and security guarding?
“As a municipal police officer, I spent nights rushing from one vandalised facility to the next. You cannot station an officer outside every building. What you can do is put protection that takes action inside each one.” Cédric Fontaine, founder of Lima Groupe
An award-winning French innovation: Audience Award, La Nuit de la Sécurité Globale (Républik Group). Figures and facts verified in September 2026.
The figures below come from the French Senate, the Ministry of the Interior and the specialist press for elected officials. They describe a reality most municipalities have lived through first-hand, and one their repair budgets are still paying for.
2,508 public buildings were set on fire or damaged in nine days during the riots of summer 2023.French Senate report, “Émeutes de juin 2023 : comprendre, évaluer, réagir”
Behind this toll, four facts explain why local authorities are now looking for something other than one more camera.
These figures reflect an exceptional peak. The cases below show that the issue did not end with the riots, and that elected officials are still living with it.
“Town halls burned, public facilities set on fire”: a night of violent riots in many municipalities.
Maire-Info, June 20232,508 buildings set on fire or damaged in nine days: the official toll of the riots.
French Senate report, 2024Assaults on mayors, “an embodiment of democratic malaise”.
France 24, July 2023“The riots spread: town halls targeted.”
Maire-Info, June 2023One year after the riots, the scars still weigh on elected officials' minds.
Maire-Info, 2024Offences against persons keep rising, year after year.
Ministry of the Interior (SSMSI), 2025 reportWhat they have in common: public facilities that are scattered, often empty at night and at weekends, and impossible to guard all at once, all the time.
The CCTV camera shows three figures climbing the workshop fence. The on-call officer is alerted, the municipal police head out, the national police are called. By the time anyone arrives, the fuel has been siphoned, the tools loaded up, a door forced. Your entire system watched: it detected, alerted, recorded. Nothing took action on site.
With a LIMA SHIELD in the workshop, the same scene is cut short: intrusion confirmed, warning beeps, then a sound of 86 to 138 decibels makes the building unbearable. The intruders leave before loading anything, the patrol arrives at an area that is already empty, and no officer has been sent in to face them.
A local authority must be able to justify every security expense to its council. So here, frankly, are the cases where LIMA SHIELD is the right tool, and those where it is not.
A demonstration lets you decide site by site, with the layout plan and costing you need for your tender. Sometimes the right answer is to equip two buildings, not ten.
Think in terms of zones to hold, not square metres: one unit covers up to 100 m², standing on its base or mounted on the wall, pointed at the area to defend. The locations local authorities choose most often:
Shields are paired in the mobile app, Lima Shield Connect, so every building can be seen, armed and controlled remotely, site by site or all at once. The alert goes to whoever you choose: the municipal police, the on-call technician, the caretaker, by notification.
1. Disarmed: the facility carries on as normal. 2. Armed: it monitors. If an intrusion is confirmed: warning beeps, a time delay, then emission. 3. Triggered: emission in progress, the sound alternating with pauses, can be switched off at any time by code, badge or app. Manual triggering is also available: panic button, remote control or app, even when the device is not armed, for absolute emergencies.
It is not a choice between your existing systems and LIMA SHIELD. You keep CCTV, remote monitoring and security guarding where they are justified: LIMA SHIELD adds the active layer inside the buildings. It is AND, not OR.
In other words, your CCTV, your contracts and your staff keep their roles. LIMA SHIELD fills the gap: the buildings nobody can guard around the clock.
A French sound shield, winner of the Audience Award at the Nuit de la Sécurité Globale (Républik Group). When an intrusion is confirmed, it warns the intruder with a sequence of beeps, then emits a sound of 86 to 138 decibels, calibrated to the 2 to 5 kHz band and modulated to prevent any habituation. The area becomes unbearable and triggers the reflex to flee. Without contact, without substances, without confrontation, and within a strictly regulated framework: warning, time delay, automatic shut-off.
Behind the unit: a French startup, co-founders from the army and the police, engineers, some of them formerly at Dassault, nearly €1 million in research and development, prototypes built in Strasbourg, and compliance with European CE standards.
“This device is already attracting interest from individuals and businesses, but also from institutional and military players, in France and internationally.” Le Figaro, July 2026
Town halls and police stations are already among the first customers and pre-orders, alongside jewellers, tobacconists and warehouses.
It is a professional instrument, drawn from research originally developed for institutional use, then specifically designed and regulated for civilian use, and that origin is what guarantees its regulated use. Think of it as the device that takes over once the alarm has done its job, that only acts on a confirmed intrusion and whose every activation is regulated: warning beeps, time delay, automatic shut-off. Exactly the standard a public facilities manager must be able to defend to the council.
| Solution | Type | During the intrusion | In practice? |
|---|---|---|---|
| Conventional alarm | Passive: detects and alerts | The siren sounds | Not much happens: noise, then waiting. |
| CCTV | Passive: sees and records | Records the scene | You get the information. Nothing more. |
| Remote monitoring | Passive: alerts and dispatches a response | Delayed response | Decent, but response times are still long. |
| Security fog | Active: conceals property | Fills the space with fog | Effective once. Open a window and it is gone. |
| Strobe light | Active: visual disruption | Flashes of light | A real impact, but highly variable. |
| Security guarding | Active: human presence | Depends on where the patrol is | Very effective, but expensive. |
| LIMA SHIELD | Active: makes intruders flee | Warning, then sound saturation | Very effective, and inexpensive. |
Ultimately, the best security set-ups are combinations: detection, footage, a response team... and something that acts on site. LIMA SHIELD is the missing piece in your set-up.
Let us do the maths for a local authority. Every act of vandalism means a repair bill on the budget, a facility closed to residents during the works, hours of staff and councillors' time, and a rising insurance premium. After the 2023 riots, repairing the 2,508 buildings affected kept municipalities busy for months.
And then there is what no budget line covers: staff demoralised at finding their workshop broken into, a public service pulling back where it should stand firm. It is not just equipment you lose: it is public presence.
Set against that, LIMA SHIELD costs €2,500 excl. VAT per unit, once, with no subscription: a capital expense, with no recurring operating cost. Equipping a municipality's sensitive sites costs less than a single major repair, and the unit is designed to last 10 years. And we carry the long-term risk: 2-year manufacturer's warranty, battery excluded.
Manufacturer's warranty: 2 years. For 2 years, if your LIMA SHIELD develops a defect or a fault, we repair or replace it. Only the battery, a wear part, is excluded. Simply contact our support: a team based in France diagnoses the issue with you and arranges the repair or replacement. Beyond these 2 years, the device is designed to last 10 years.
Number of sites, zones to hold, coordination with the municipal police: a security expert builds the plan with you. LIMA SHIELD is produced in limited runs and is regularly out of stock.
Order LIMA SHIELDcheck availability Request a demonstrationwith a security expertYes. For indoor use, no French law known to date caps the power of an acoustic deterrent device, and LIMA SHIELD falls into a category distinct from sirens. CE compliant, its activation in the event of an intrusion falls within the legitimate defence of property (article 122-5 of the Code pénal, the French Criminal Code), with warning, time delay and automatic shut-off. Questions mainly arise for outdoor sound devices: here, we protect the inside of buildings.
The device is pointed at the areas to protect and is armed when the building closes. The warning beeps and the 10-second time delay leave time to disarm by code, badge or app. A brief accidental activation causes at most temporary discomfort: no substances, no clean-up.
Start with the demonstration: a security expert draws up the layout plan and the quote for your tender. The device is booked as a capital investment, with no subscription or recurring operating cost, which makes the budget decision simpler.
Whoever you choose, and several people at once: notification via the app, relayed by 4G as backup. Each site reports its status continuously, and the whole municipality is controlled from the same app.
No, this is exactly what it is built for: detection and triggering are local and need no network, the built-in 4G transmits alerts, and the battery lasts 1 month on standby, up to 3 months with the optional secondary batteries.
No: guards on the sites that require human judgement, Shields in all the buildings that cannot be guarded. The full comparison, costs included, is on the security guarding page.