The fact that the article states that this happened to several bars, all in Grenoble suggests that there is probably more than meets the eye. There is a lot of mafia activity in Grenoble and bars (as well as pizzerias and night clubs...) are notorious for being fronts and for whatever other dodgy activities.
I would not be too surprised if the bars in question have links to the criminal world and the police simply used whatever hard evidence of wrongdoing they could find to bring them down or perhaps as a way to gain further access to documents, etc. I'm pretty sure that a bar owner "unknown to police services" (as they say) would simply receive a warning that logs must be kept, at least at first.
This seems like a just world hypothesis rationalization of the civil rights abuse that's going on. It's basically saying "they must be guilty, otherwise they wouldn't have been arrested!". Maybe this time they really are The Bad Guys, but the problem is that if this behavior is tolerated, it's very possible for the police to do the same for dissidents, activists, or someone who pissed off the mayor.
I must say I do not understand the hostile replies to my previous comment.
Like it or not, the law mandates something and thus that must be complied with.
Now, despite what some people might like to think, the police do not barge in and arrest people as soon as they notice that they are not keeping logs. If they do arrest someone for this that person is a repeat offender or someone who's in police's sight for serious criminal activity.
That's simply the mundane reality. Of course reality does not lend itself well to outrage....
In other words, taking Al Capone down for tax evasion.
But as I understand it, taking down Al Capone in that way was only necessary because at the time the laws now used to attack organized crime (RICO for instance) didn't yet exist. If France doesn't presently have laws that allow the government to attack these sort of organizations [doubt], they really should be writing such laws instead of leaning on selective enforcement of chickenshit violations.
I would not be too surprised if the bars in question have links to the criminal world and the police simply used whatever hard evidence of wrongdoing they could find to bring them down or perhaps as a way to gain further access to documents, etc. I'm pretty sure that a bar owner "unknown to police services" (as they say) would simply receive a warning that logs must be kept, at least at first.