RACISM | POLICE BRUTALITY | WILL PROTESTS ACHIEVE THE DESIRED RESULTS
A post by Kit Desjacques
A number of you have written to make sure I was okay since there is so much rioting, violence, and arrests here in France. Yes, I am fine. Inconvenience is the biggest issue for people like me. Transportation stops at 9 pm in an effort to discourage the rioters from going places.
My friend, Kit Desjacques, has written a column for Medium. I would like to share it with it. Kit is in my Paris writing group and writes regularly for Medium so please check her out.
RACISM | POLICE BRUTALITY | WILL PROTESTS ACHIEVE THE DESIRED RESULTS
A Traffic Stop Ended in a Police Shooting That Provoked Violent Protests in France
The headline ‘tension between rioters and law enforcement’ doesn’t quite capture what’s going on
Published in
At 12:15 am on Friday, we’re in bed but we can’t sleep.
“What’s that noise? Shh. Listen.”
It sounds like thunder, but there’s no storm. An explosion? A bomb? There’s a big sucking sound followed by a boom. Someone is shooting off giant commercial-grade fireworks, but there’s nothing visible in the sky.
The rockets are being launched at the police. On the ground.
Helicopters have been circling since nightfall. Despite the 9:00 pm curfew in Ile de France, the ring of suburbs that surround Paris, gangs of young French protesters are roaming the streets, launching rockets, and starting fires.
There’s a war going on, and it’s right next door.
It started on Tuesday with the shooting of a 17-year old boy from Nanterre, “Nahel M.” He and a couple of friends were stopped by police for driving in a bus lane. Witnesses say that the police got off their motorcycles and approached the car.
At that moment, Nahel hit the gas, apparently intending to escape.
An unidentified policeman fired his gun through the driver’s window hitting Nahel’s arm and chest. He died an hour later in a nearby hospital. The officer involved claimed Nahel was driving the car toward him.
An amateur video suggests otherwise.
It’s hard to maintain you were acting in self-defense if the other guy was fleeing. According to the lawyer for the officer who shot Nahel, his client was aiming for the driver’s legs but got bumped.
The lawyer said his (unidentified) client was “devastated” by Nahel’s death and didn’t mean to kill him.
Nahel’s mother disputes this version.
Appearing in TV interviews she was quoted as saying, “The policeman saw an Arab face, a little kid, and he wanted to take his life.” She asked residents of Nanterre to hold “a peaceful march” on Thursday afternoon.
By Thursday night, it had turned ugly.
Nahel was of Moroccan and Algerian descent. Protesters claim this is another case of police brutality and racial profiling. Are there policemen who are racist? Likely so.
Whether that was a factor, in this case, is unknown.
France prides itself on being colorblind, and the government goes to what seems (to my American perspective) extreme lengths to treat all citizens as “French,” prohibiting the collection of data on the racial or ethnic composition of its citizens.
The last time that kind of data was collected was when the Nazis occupied France.
It’s too early to know what happened. No one has any answers, but everyone has an opinion.
A number of public figures, including President Macron, have weighed in on the event. Macron was initially quoted as saying the shooting was “inexplicable and inexcusable,” but he later condemned the protests as “absolutely unjustifiable.”
He may be right on both counts.
French actor, Omar Sy, (star of the popular Lupin series), said, “May a justice system worthy of its name honor the memory of this child.” Popular Paris Saint-Germain soccer player Kylian Mbappe tweeted, “I am hurting for my France. An unacceptable situation.”
Meanwhile, we’re in our fourth day of violent protests—all over France.
Last night, 40,000 police, gendarmes, and the Anti-Gang Brigade were dispatched all over France to try and maintain order. Despite their efforts and the arrests of over 800 people, there was enough burning, looting, and destruction to leave everyone feeling skittish.
It feels like there is a civil war going on in France.
Earlier in the evening I had gone to a friend’s house with a few of her journalist friends for cold drinks and to admire her rooftop view of the Eiffel Tower. A journalist friend was on call to meet an incoming news team from London.
She had her phone nearby, awaiting developments. Everyone shared information—and misinformation—about the incident. The cop was a veteran who had served in Afghanistan, “not a hothead,” someone ventured.
“That’s true,” said another person. “There were no prior complaints about him. In fact, he got a couple of commendations as a policeman.”
We know that at age 17, Nahel M. didn’t have a driver’s license since the minimum age for one in France is 18. Further unconfirmed reports suggest that Nahel M. was known to police, but his record was clean.
Just then, my phone buzzed. It was my husband letting me know to come home early because public transportation was shutting down. It was only 7:30 pm, but we don’t live in central Paris.
We’re in a small suburban town that adjoins Nanterre, where the shooting occurred.
The Metro was still running, but all surface transportation was shutting down by 8:00 pm because of the curfew.
I was lucky to find a train that got me within walking distance of home.
We live in a white-bread bedroom community that was built as an affordable alternative to expensive Paris real estate when the car factories that previously occupied this bank of the river shut down.
It’s a slice of petite bourgeoisie that borders the working-class town of Nanterre.
Nanterre, a town of 100,000 people, is home to a large university and a sizeable immigrant population. It is where Nahel and his mother lived, and where the shooting took place.
My husband and I gave up trying to sleep and got up to watch the TV news.
The protesters have put up barricades and are shooting off fireworks from behind them. There are armored vehicles and troops in riot gear and fires everywhere.
The news resembles war footage with armed soldiers stepping over the burned skeletons of what used to be cars. There are buses on fire. A tram. A school. A community center. A bank.
Our neighborhood usually quiets down around midnight, but everyone is awake. Up and down the courtyard, building lights and TVs are on. People silently watch the war unfold on TV, less than three miles from our apartment.
The police officer has been charged with homicide intentional.
As the only lawyer at the party earlier, I was asked to translate the term for one of my reporter friends and the American network she works for.
“Voluntary manslaughter, I think.”
It was a guess. I know very little about American criminal law and even less about its French counterpart. I saw later that the New York Times called it “voluntary murder,” and wondered if I’d given her bum information.
Is there a such thing as involuntary murder? Sounds like an oxymoron.
Tension continues to build. There is a curfew again tonight. We canceled our weekend plans. Everyone is watching and waiting to see what will happen.
On the one hand, violent protests get important issues like racial profiling and police brutality on the table for people to discuss.
Will these discussions have the desired effect or will they just push more people into Marine Le Pen’s anti-immigrant camp in the next presidential election?
It remains to be seen.
thanks for offering this commentary--I'm very interested in France, and appreciate the perspectives here, and feel the pain around so much racism in this country and in the world.