France condemns the murder of a teenage black man by a police officer and calls for accountability in the wake of George Floyd’s death
Though police killings in the US and France are not as common as they are in France, recent deaths at the hands of French police have prompted calls for more accountability. France also saw protests against racial profiling and other injustice in the wake of George Floyd’s killing by police in Minnesota.
Speaking to Parliament, Prime Minister Elisabeth Borne said, “the shocking images broadcast yesterday show an intervention that appears clearly not to comply with the rules of engagement of our police forces.”
Both officers said they drew their guns to prevent him from fleeing. According to Prache, the officer who fired the shot thought that he and his colleagues could be struck by a car.
The killing was “inexplicable and inexcusable”, as was the call for calm. He told reporters that there was “no excuse” for the death of a young person.
French activists call for action on police abuse in neighborhoods like the one Nahel lived in, where many residents struggle with poverty and racial discrimination. Government officials condemned the killing and sought to distance themselves from the police officer’s actions.
The police officer is being investigated for manslaughter and preliminary charges could be laid as soon as Thursday, according to the prosecutor’s office.
Emmanuel Macron meets with the parliamentary assembly on Thursday night of riots in the suburb of Nanterre, France, where Nahel was killed
Protesters built barricades, lit fires and sprayed fireworks at the police in French streets in the middle of the night as tensions grew over a fatal police shooting of a teenager. Over 600 people were arrested and 200 police officers were injured in the third night of unrest as the government struggled to restore order.
Macron also said it was time for “remembrance and respect” as Nahel’s mother called for a silent march Thursday in his honor on the square where he was killed.
At the beginning of the meeting that was aimed at securing hot spots and planning for the upcoming days, which is when full peace can return, the president said “these acts are totally unjustifiable.”
Some 40,000 police officers were deployed to quell the protests. The interior minister said that police had imprisoned 667 people, but the Paris police headquarters said just 307 of them were in the city.
The government deployed 2,000 police to maintain order on Wednesday after violence erupted in the suburb of Nanterre where Nahel was killed. But violence resumed after dusk.
President Emmanuel Macron planned to leave an EU summit in Brussels, where France plays a major role in European policymaking, to return to Paris and hold an emergency security meeting Friday.
A national police spokeswoman says around 200 police officers were injured. There was no information regarding injuries among the rest of the population.
Police used water cannons, tear gas and dispersion grenades against rioters at schools, town halls and police stations.
A night of violence was denounced by Interior Minister Gerald Darmanin. His office described the arrests as a sharp increase on previous operations as part of an overall government efforts to be “extremely firm” with rioters.
More-than-600 arrests after a new night of tests across France over teens: the case of the accident of two French boys running from a police officer
In order to quell weeks of rioting around France after the accidental death of two boys running from police in 2005, the government stopped short of declaring a state of emergency.
The police officer accused of pulling the trigger Tuesday was handed a preliminary charge of voluntary homicide after prosecutor Pascal Prache said his initial investigation led him to conclude “the conditions for the legal use of the weapon were not met.” In preliminary charges, investigating judges strongly suspect wrongdoing but need to investigate more before sending a case to trial.
The detained police officer’s lawyer, speaking on French TV channel BFMTV, said the officer was sorry and “devastated.” The officer did what he thought was necessary in the moment, attorney Laurent-Franck Lienard told the news outlet.
“He is not up to kill people in the morning,” said Lienard, who did not reveal the officer’s name. He really didn’t want to die.
“We need to go much further than saying that things need to calm down,” Sopo said. “The issue here is how do we make it so that we have a police force that when they see Blacks and Arabs, don’t tend to shout at them, use racist terms against them and in some cases, shoot them in the head.”
In Nanterre, a peaceful march Thursday afternoon in honor of Nahel was followed by escalating confrontations, with smoke billowing from cars and garbage bins set ablaze.
Source: https://www.npr.org/2023/06/30/1185268439/more-than-600-arrests-after-a-new-night-of-protests-across-france-over-teens-kil
A French rioter’s nightmare after a bullet happened in the 2005 Paris shooting and scuffles in France’s southwest suburbs
The town of Clamart, home to 54,000 people in the French capital’s southwest suburbs, imposed an overnight curfew through Monday because of the risk of public disturbances. A similar curfew was announced in the town of Neuilly-sur-Marne in the eastern suburbs.
The unrest extended as far as Brussels, the Belgian capital city and EU administrative hub, where about a dozen people were detained during scuffles related to the shooting in France. Several fires have been brought under control according to Ilse Van dekeere.
Nahel, the young man, was driving a car with a Polish license plate, and police tried to stop him because he looked so young. He got stuck in traffic because he ran a red light.
The scenes in France’s suburbs echoed 2005, when the deaths of 15-year-old Bouna Traoré and 17-year-old Zyed Benna led to three weeks of riots, exposing anger and resentment in neglected housing projects. Clichy-sous-Bois had a power station that the boys hid in.
The 13 people who were shot and killed by police last year didn’t comply with traffic stops. Nahel has been one of three people this year who have died in similar circumstances.