An €80m-a-year taskforce is intended to deter public urination and the dropping of cigarette butts, among other things. So where are its enforcement officers?

Louise took one last puff of her cigarette and threw the butt into the gutter near Place de la Bastille. Her two friends were about to do the same.

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Little did they know that, as of Monday, this most commonplace of Parisian acts could have landed them with a €68 (£57.30) fine. To the surprise of many residents of the French capital, the city authorities launched an “incivility brigade” on to the streets and boulevards – their mission to clean up the city by clamping down on anti-social behaviour.

Louise and her friends summed up the incredulity of many. “Vous rigolez?” they asked. “You’re joking?”

The new brigade of “security agents” was supposed to mean 1,900 municipal agents, uniformed and issued with wooden-handled truncheons or teargas, ready to hand out a friendly warning or a fine to anyone who committed a series of familiar Parisian acts. People who littered or let their animal foul the pavement, who relieved themselves on the street, or who threw a cigarette end to the ground would be made to see the error of their ways.

The team, whose members are to pound the beat by foot or on bicycles, was – it was reported – tasked to be on duty 24 hours a day, seven days a week, across the capital.

But where were they? The Guardian found none at Place de la République where, as always, there were plenty of cigarette butts on the pavement. There were none at Place de la Bastille either, where the surrounding roads were as dotted with dog dirt as they usually are. None to be seen at Place de l’Opéra, thronging with tourists, or on the litter-strewn Grands Boulevards.

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Near the chic Place des Vosges, in Paris’s oldest district, the Marais, a middle-aged man screwed up an envelope and threw it in the direction of a bin. When it missed and landed on the pavement, he kept walking. Did he know about the new incivility task force? “What? I have no idea what you’re talking about,” he said, before walking off.

On Monday Paris city hall, which says anti-social behaviour costs the capital’s taxpayers €80 million a year, suggested the unit was “getting going” but needed some time to establish itself. “We’re not saying anything about it for the moment,” said a spokesperson.

The economic magazine Les Echos suggested that the limited size of the brigade – estimated to cost €10 million a year – meant there would only be a “handful of agents” for each area.

Street cleaners collect an estimated 350 tonnes of cigarette butts from the city’s 2,900km (1,800 miles) of pavements and 1,600km of roads, yet many visitors still consider Paris to be dirty. “There’s a lot of litter and in this heat it is sometimes very smelly,” said Yan, a Chinese tourist outside the Paris Opera house. “I love Paris but this was a surprise for me.”

Among the nearly 2,000 agents will be a 320-strong rapid reaction unit to be on hand in evenings and weekends to mediate between noisy bar and café customers and local residents.

On the website of the newspaper 20 Minutes, one welcomed the new guardians of Paris’s cleanliness, writing: “I find it completely normal … I’m a smoker but it doesn’t take a fraction of a second to put the cigarette end in a rubbish bin. As for urinating … a marvellous invention exists … WCs.”