ARIS, Sept. 11 — They roll faster than a speeding scooter, they jump curbs in a single bound. Regarde, crossing the boulevard! It's an errant hockey player, it's an office messenger on wheels, it's the French in-line skating police!

Sgt. Gérard Lucero, 43, streaks through Latin Quarter traffic and cuts a tight but elegant circle to stop short beside his colleague, Eddy Sargis, who is standing with one leg cocked forward on the rear wheel of his skate, toes pointed skyward. The two are part of Paris's roller brigade, 38 ball-bearing mounted cops who zip about hunting for lawbreakers while delighting tourists and titillating young Parisiennes.

"It attracts the eye," Officer Sargis said with a wry smile.

Leave it to the French to turn policing into a trendy fashion statement. The rolleurs look like real life superheroes in their tight blue uniforms and futuristic thermoplastic helmets, which are molded into a stylized blue flame flickering back from their heads. Their skates give even the most diminutive frame a gallant stature.

But "Blade Runner" this is not: despite their cool attire, the brigade's primary job is to keep bus lanes clear of passenger cars and to spot drivers chatting on mobile telephones. Though they carry standard-issue sidearms, they are prohibited by police regulations from drawing weapons while on skates.

The roller brigade was created during the 1998 World Cup, when eight policemen were sent gliding down the Champs-Élysées as part of a parade. They were later given the job of escorting the growing throng of in-line skaters that have been touring the city every Friday night since a 1997 transport strike.

"We needed someone who could communicate with them," said Lt. Emmanuel Mairesse, the brigade's leader, a surfboard propped beside a jug of protein powder in the vaulted stone room of a 19th-century military barracks that serves as the brigade's base.

But mostly the roller brigade is meant to give Parisian police a hipper, friendlier face in a country where "les flics," as France's police are derogatorily called, are widely resented and often despised.

"The image of the police has been very bad and we're trying to remake it," said Sergeant Lucero, standing with his skate-clad feet splayed at a 10 o'clock angle.

Most of the skating police officers are in their mid-20's. Some are even tattooed and pierced, although they are not allowed to display their adornments while on duty.

As duties go, it's not bad. The men skate four or five hours a day, three days a week, plus the Friday evening excursions, and spend the rest of their time at the police academy lifting weights, jogging or practicing skating technique.

That is not to say the job isn't risky. Cobblestone streets, for one thing, can trip up even the best skater. Embedded traffic reflectors are another hazard. When it rains, the police do not skate at all because the streets are too slick.

Sergeant Lucero said he went head over heels recently when he ran into a parked car while accompanying the Friday night in-line skating mob, which grows to 20,000 or more skaters in good weather. "I'm a specialist in falling," he said.

So far, no one in the brigade has been seriously hurt on the job, though the brigade always has one or two members out of action because of minor injuries.

They wear Mission brand in-line skates built for hockey players and replace the ball bearings about every two months. They buy new skates every year.

There are in-line skating police in California, Puerto Rico, Britain and Belgium, but few work year round. The French brigade patrols in groups of three or four in all seasons, covering an average 20 miles or so over the course of a four-hour tour.

Officer Sargis waved over a Mercedes minivan that was sneaking down the bus lane on the Boulevard St.-Germain and asked the flustered woman behind the wheel to show him her driver's license. Two other officers glided around the car while Sergeant Lucero watched at a distance from behind the rectangular lenses of his sunglasses.

After issuing a warning, the police were off again, sailing down the tree-lined avenue in a graceful counterpoint to the afternoon's stop-and-go traffic.

Occasionally, the roller cops are called upon for more dramatic tasks, such as cordoning off accident sites or, more rarely, chasing down petty thieves.

"We're less visible than a police car or a policeman on a bicycle," Sergeant Lucero said, recounting an operation last year in which six of his men caught a member of a gang that had been burglarizing parking meters.

Wherever they go, though, they do attract attention.

"I'm in I don't know how many thousands of Japanese snapshots," Sergeant Lucero said.